fork()

[Tim Peters]

[Bernhard Herzog]
> I fear that in reality the memory is copied after all. If they use
> the dictionary in any way they are modifying refcounts of at least
> some of the objects in the dictionary. From the OS's point of view
> this counts as modifying the memory.

[Hrvoje Niksic]
> Eek.  You're right.  Refcounting truly sucks.  :-(

OTOH, in a straightfoward mark-and-sweep GC scheme there will at least be a
"mark bit" in each object header.  So under that, or under any form of
compacting GC, the *entire live object space* will get copied, regardless of
whether *you* reference anything in it or not.  So if RC truly sucks, what
does that make GC <wink>?

easy-answers-don't-always-work-ly y'rs  - tim