manual memory management

[Mehrdad]

On Wednesday, 9 January 2013 at 07:23:16 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 1/8/2013 10:55 PM, Mehrdad wrote:
>> On Tuesday, 8 January 2013 at 22:19:56 UTC, Walter Bright 
>> wrote:
>>> One thing I'd add is that a GC is *required* if you want to 
>>> have a language
>>> that guarantees memory safety
>>
>>
>>
>> Pardon?  shared_ptr anyone? You can totally have a language 
>> that only provides
>> new/delete facilities and which only access to memory through 
>> managed pointers
>> like shared_ptr... without a GC. I don't see where a GC is 
>> "required" as you say.
>
> Reference counting is a valid form of GC.
>
> C++'s shared_ptr, however, is both optional and allows access 
> to the underlying raw pointers. Hence, memory safety cannot be 
> guaranteed.


Right, I never claimed C++ is memory safe.

I just said that a language that does something similar without
giving you raw pointer access is perfectly possible and (short of
memory leaks due to cycles) also perfectly safe.