Success! (Precisely)

[Craig Black]

"dsimcha" <dsimcha at yahoo.com> wrote in message 
news:hcfu9t$9dp$1 at digitalmars.com...
> == Quote from Craig Black (craigblack2 at cox.net)'s article
>> "dsimcha" <dsimcha at yahoo.com> wrote in message
>> news:hcdsbq$4i9$1 at digitalmars.com...
>> > After a few evenings of serious hacking, I've integrated precise heap
>> > scanning
>> > into the GC.
>> Awesome!  Thank you so much for doing this.  Does the GC have knowledge 
>> of
>> pointers on both the stack as well as the heap?
>
> No.  Precise stack and static data segment scanning would be an order of 
> magnitude
> harder to implement because it would require going deep into compiler 
> hacking.
> Precise heap scanning, to the extent that I can get the mask information 
> to the GC
> somehow, can be implemented by just hacking the runtime.
>
>> > 3.  new only takes RTTI.  It is not a template.  Unless RTTI gets 
>> > bitmasks
>> > in
>> > the format I created (which I'll document once I clean things up and
>> > release,
>> > but has only deviated slightly from what I had talked about here), 
>> > stuff
>> > allocated using it won't be able to take advantage of precise heap
>> > scanning.
>> > The default bitmask, if none is provided, uses good (bad) old-fashioned
>> > conservative scanning unless the entire block has no pointers, in which
>> > case
>> > it isn't scanned.  This means that we have all the more incentive to
>> > replace
>> > new with a template of some kind.
>> I'm surprised nobody commented on this.  Andrei said Walter decided that 
>> new
>> shouldn't be a template.  But it seems like a good idea to me.  Templated
>> new has received positive feedback from the community, and here is 
>> another
>> advantage of templated new.
>> -Craig
>
> What's the rationale for not templating new?  IMHO it makes a lot of sense 
> b/c
> then you have access to all the compile time features of the language 
> while
> new'ing stuff, such as the ability to generate bitmasks.

You would have to ask Walter.  The only downside I see is the extra 
exclaimation point, but perhaps he has another reason.

-Craig