[cl-irc-devel] Circular references, garbage collection & library implementation

[Zach Beane]

On Tue, Mar 22, 2005 at 04:26:33PM +0100, Erik Huelsmann wrote:
> > Without knowing the internals of cl-irc...
> > 
> > If an object isn't reachable, it is garbage collected. Circular
> > unreachable references are not a problem.
> 
> Wow! That's far more sophisticated than I'm used from any
> self-memory-managing language. Can I count on that in any lisp
> implementation? (in other words, is that part of the standard?)

Garbage collection is not part of the standard. However, I don't know
of any Lisp that doesn't do GC, and all the Lisp GCs I know of are not
reference counting GCs. Reference counting is a pretty bad (but easy,
thus popular) strategy for memory management, since it can be slower
than a real GC and it has the circularity problems you
mention. Reference counting is a joke; Lisp GCs are usually serious.

Zach