On: A Programming Idiom You've Never Heard Of

[richdougherty]

That depends on the GC implementation. Maybe you're saying that because most modern collectors tend to generational collection, and copy between generation heaps.

But copying is not required for GC. The trusty mark-and-sweep algorithm doesn't copy, for example.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_collection_%28computer_...

[Someone → richdougherty]

In fact, one can claim that mark-and-sweep is one of the few garbage collection algorithms that actually collect garbage.

Many others collect non-garbage. Because there typically is way less non-garbage than garbage, that is what makes them competitive with alloc/free.

[richdougherty → Someone]

That's an interesting point, thanks.