Idea #1 on integrating RC with GC

[Jameson Ernst]

On Thursday, 6 February 2014 at 23:13:11 UTC, Marco Leise wrote:
> The intent is to make it possible to avoid the GC, but if I
> understand you correctly you talk about always allocating
> through the GC first.

One of the ideas on the table is to use ARC backed by the GC to 
clear cycles, which would mean the GC needs to be aware of all 
allocations anyway so it can scan and clear them if a cycle is 
formed. It's not safe to start reference counting GC memory at an 
arbitrary time after allocation, since references to it could be 
anywhere, but if you have a unique expression, then you know 
there are no other references to the new data, so it's safe to 
begin reference counting it at that time before it propagates out 
into the program at large.