Question about garbage collection specification

[Steven Schveighoffer via Digitalmars-d]

On 6/14/15 8:44 AM, "Marc =?UTF-8?B?U2Now7x0eiI=?= <schuetzm at gmx.net>" 
wrote:
> On Sunday, 14 June 2015 at 11:36:59 UTC, Paulo Pinto wrote:
>> On Sunday, 14 June 2015 at 11:03:00 UTC, Marc Schütz wrote:
>>> As for arbitrary pointer arithmetic being allowed, I guess that's
>>> because the language doesn't distinguish between GC and non-GC
>>> pointers. And note that it is un- at safe anyway.
>>>
>>> [1] http://dlang.org/garbage.html
>>
>> Wouldn't it make sense to do so?
>>
>> Active Oberon, Modula-3 and .NET make such difference in their pointer
>> types.
>>
>> I would imagine it could help in terms of what is possible for GC
>> improvements.
>
> Definitely, but I don't see how it could reasonably be added to the
> language now.

We can create new types of pointers, remove void * from the language, 
and get rid of unions, and yes, *ONLY THEN* we can have a GC that takes 
advantage of this.

These are painful, massively breaking changes. It's not going to happen.

-Steve