Re: What Garbage Collectors Do

Hi,

I think it is a matter of "interpretation" of the term "garbage
collector", for example, considering the basic principle of how a
garbage collector works [1]:
   1. Determine what data objects in a program will not be accessed in
the future
   2. Reclaim the resources used by those objects
I could say that:
   1. I "collect" the objects considered garbage.
   2. I "throw" the garbage, leaving space for new data to be allocated.

Regards,
Eliseo.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_collection_(computer_science)

On Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 1:01 PM, Bob Lee <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 8:16 AM, Randall R Schulz <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> On Thursday 05 June 2008 07:33, Nils Kilden-Pedersen wrote:
>> > It's a common misconception that the GC needs to clean garbage. The
>> > GC is limited by live objects, not dead. The term "garbage collector"
>> > is truly a misnomer with current implementations as it is not garbage
>> > that is being collected, but non-garbage, i.e. live objects.
>>
>> How accurate / complete is this notion? It does not seem entirely
>> sensible to me.
>
>
> It sounds like Nils is talking about the "copying" aspect of the garbage
> collector in which it "collects" the live objects, compacts and moves them
> to a different piece of memory, and then frees the old memory all at once.
>
> Bob
>
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