GCs in the news

[H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d]

On Thu, Jul 17, 2014 at 10:33:26PM -0700, Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On 7/17/2014 3:16 PM, Dicebot wrote:
> >On Thursday, 17 July 2014 at 22:06:01 UTC, Brad Anderson wrote:
> >>I agreed with this for awhile but following the conversation here
> >><https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/phobos/pull/2149> I'm
> >>more inclined to think we should be adding lazy versions of
> >>functions where possible rather than versions with OutputRange
> >>parameters. It's more flexible that way and can result in even fewer
> >>allocations than even OutputRange parameters would have (i.e. you
> >>can have chains of lazy operations and only allocate on the final
> >>step, or not at all in some cases).
> >>
> >>Laziness isn't appropriate or possible everywhere but it's much
> >>easier to go from lazy to eager than the other way around.
> >>
> >>>[...]
> >
> >This is not comparable. Lazy input range based solutions do not make
> >it possible to change allocation strategy, they simply defer the
> >allocation point. Ideally both are needed.
> 
> They move the allocation point to the top level, rather than the
> bottom or intermediate level.

Deferring the allocation point to the top level has the advantage of
letting high-level user code decide what the allocation strategy should
be, rather than percolating that decision down the call graph to every
low-level function.

Of course, it's not always possible to defer this, such as if you need
to tell a container which allocator to use. But IMO this should be
pushed up to higher-level code whenever possible.


T

-- 
Why can't you just be a nonconformist like everyone else? -- YHL