Python's garbage collection was Re: Python reliability

[Delaney, Timothy (Tim)]

Tom Anderson wrote:

> Except that in smalltalk, this isn't true: in ST, every variable
> *appears* to contain a reference to an object, but implementations
> may not actually work like that. In particular, SmallTalk 80 (and
> some earlier smalltalks, and all subsequent smalltalks, i think)
> handles small integers (those that fit in wordsize-1 bits)
> differently: all variables contain a word, whose bottom bit is a tag
> bit; if it's one, the word is a genuine reference, and if it's zero,
> the top bits of the word contain a signed integer.

This type of implementation has been discussed on python-dev. IIRC it
was decided by Guido that unless anyone wanted to implement it and show
a significant performance advantage without any regressions on any
platform, it wasn't worth it.

Basically, put up or shut up ;)

Tim Delaney