Warp wrote:
>   Yet, as I said, languages like PHP and Objective C seem to use
> reference counting without too many problems.

I think they're doing more than reference counting.

Reference counting is also quite slow for things that allocate and 
deallocate a lot, as you have to update the counts (atomically, if 
threaded) for every assignment.  Plus, if your objects are small (think 
LISP), it's a really poor choice.

Here's a decent FAQ I found while looking into the PHP stuff:

http://www.iecc.com/gclist/GC-faq.html

It pretty much covers the basics.  A lot of the cutting-edge stuff 
(realtime incremental GC with hardware support etc) is behind a 
you-have-to-pay-for-membership portals, like ACM stuff.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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