Reference counting garbage collection

[Paul Rubin]

Eyal Lotem <eyal at hyperroll.com> writes:
> > No, and for several reasons.  The most obvious one is that Python runs on
> > word-addressed machines, where no bits of a pointer are abusable.
> Unless Python runs a more strict allocation policy (Allocate only 
> even-numbered dwords, or limit the allocation storage to half the size).

What machines are those anyway?  How do they deal with byte arrays?