Garbage collection

[Steve Holden]

Alex Martelli wrote:
> Tom Wright <tew24 at spam.ac.uk> wrote:
> 
>> real programs.  I can't help thinking that there are some situations where
>> you need a lot of memory for a short time though, and it would be nice to
>> be able to use it briefly and then hand most of it back.  Still, I see the
>> practical difficulties with doing this.
> 
> What I do in those cases:
> a. fork
> b. do the memory-hogging work in the child process
> c. meanwhile the parent just waits
> d. the child sends back to the parent the small results
> e. the child terminates
> f. the parent proceeds merrily
> 
> I learned this architectural-pattern a long, long time ago, around the
> time when fork first got implemented via copy-on-write pages... 
> 
Yup, it's easier to be pragmatic and find the real solution to your 
problem than it is to try and mould reality to your idea of what the 
solution should be ...

regards
  Steve
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