More radical ideas about gc and reference counting

[Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d]

On 4/30/14, 2:24 PM, deadalnix wrote:
> On Wednesday, 30 April 2014 at 20:57:26 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> I don't remember a proposal being made that made slices of structs
>> with destructors distinct from other slices.
>
> So the RC slice thing is what make all that worthwhile ?

I can't discuss this as I'm not sure what past discussions it refers.

>>> Also, RC is good on top of GC, so
>>> you can collect loop, especially if we are going to RC automagically.
>>> That is a major issue.
>>
>> That stays, and it's useful. I'm talking destructors here.
>>
>
> Then the RCSlice do not provide any guarantee at all.

The guarantee it provides is once the refcount goes down to 0, elements 
will be destroyed.

>> We need to improve the language to allow for such. Did I mention it's
>> not going to be easy?
>>
>
> If I understand what you mentioned, RCSlice is what make to you the
> ditching of destructor worthwhile.

No, they are somewhat loosely related. Destructors are not called for 
arrays of struct _today_, so in that regard we're looking at improving a 
preexisting issue.

> The fact that this is not doable in
> current D should be a showstopper for this whole thread as all that is
> discussed here is dependent of what solution we choose for this problem
> (right now we have none).

This thread is a good place to discuss language improvements that make 
RCSlice possible.


Andrei