RTS/Garbage Collector idea

[Isaac Dupree]

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Simon Marlow wrote:
> I think what you're proposing is often called "hash consing", except
> that hash-consing is usually done at construction time, you want to do
> it at GC time.
> 
> My take is it would only be worthwhile if there was a *lot* of sharing
> to be gained by doing it, and in most cases there wouldn't be.

Sounds likely.  I wonder if there's a theoretical limit on the amount of
memory "wasted" by not doing this (maybe some function of the amount of
memory needed after such compaction?)

> This is
> just a guess based on my experience poking around in the heap though -
> feel free to try it out and prove me wrong :-)

if I feel like it, which seems a bit unlikely - might be useful as a
last-ditch garbage collection technique, but the process probably needs
nontrivial amount of memory itself so maybe not :-)

Issac

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