Idea #1 on integrating RC with GC

[Adam Wilson]

On Tue, 04 Feb 2014 17:12:37 -0800, deadalnix <deadalnix at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tuesday, 4 February 2014 at 23:51:35 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> Consider we add a library slice type called RCSlice!T. It would have  
>> the same primitives as T[] but would use reference counting through and  
>> through. When the last reference count is gone, the buffer underlying  
>> the slice is freed. The underlying allocator will be the GC allocator.
>>
>> Now, what if someone doesn't care about the whole RC thing and aims at  
>> convenience? There would be a method .toGC that just detaches the slice  
>> and disables the reference counter (e.g. by setting it to uint.max/2 or  
>> whatever).
>>
>> Then people who want reference counting say
>>
>> auto x = fun();
>>
>> and those who don't care say:
>>
>> auto x = fun().toGC();
>>
>>
>> Destroy.
>>
>> Andrei
>
> RC need GC to collect loops. So you want to have the GC at the lowest  
> level.
>
> That being understood, I'd rather connect things the other way around.
>
> auto x = foo();
> auto x = foo().toRC();

The ARC crowd is going to hate this because it's still a GC allocation  
then you hook it to RC. So they can still have random GC pauses.

-- 
Adam Wilson
GitHub/IRC: LightBender
Aurora Project Coordinator