Garbage collector memory leak "feature"?

[nick.b]

David Brown wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 13, 2007 at 02:07:28PM +0900, Bill Baxter wrote:
> 
>> I posted a bug about AA's causing memory exhaustion (with a test 
>> case).  If you're talking about a bug where false pointers on the 
>> stack cause memory exhaustion, I don't think anyone has actually run 
>> across such a case in practice.
> 
> The reason is that as long as the set of false pointers is bounded, the
> amount of unreclaimed memory is also unbounded.
> 
> The bad leaks happen when the allocated blocks themselves contain false
> pointers, and continuous allocation generates more false pointers.
> 
> A good reference about this is:
>    <http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2001/HPL-2001-251.html>
> 


David - thanks for the reference to the 9 page PDF. It looks like an 
excellent document.

Nick