Python's garbage collection was Re: Python reliability

[Paul Rubin]

"Diez B. Roggisch" <deets at nospam.web.de> writes:
> AFAIK some LISPs do a similar trick to carry int values on
> cons-cells. And by this tehy reduce integer precision to 28 bit or
> something. Surely _not_ going to pass a regression test suite :)

Lisps often use just one tag bit, to distinguish between an immediate
object and a heap object.  With int/long unification, Python shouldn't
be able to tell the difference between an immediate int and a heap int.

I seem to remember that KCL (and maybe GCL/AKCL) uses heap-consed ints
just like Python does.  It doesn't seem to be disastrous.