Re: on the topic of GC.

[Jim Blandy <jimb at red-bean dot com>]

> Wouldn't it be possible to have a function scanning some region of memory
> and looking for possible references that haven't been registered?  This
> function would help debugging and could even be used to check heap areas:
> Guile does require explicit registering for heap objects, so there is even
> with the current approach a chance that you forget to register something.

I'm not sure what you're suggesting here.  It sounds like the idea is
to use precise marking, but then check up on it with a conservative
scanner.

I'm not sure what benefits this provides.

- If you believe that conservative marking is more accurate than
  precise marking, then you should be using conservative scanning for
  marking, not just for error checking.
- If you believe that conservative marking is less accurate than
  precise marking, then this error checking would produce mostly
  misleading warnings.
- If you believe that conservative marking is as accurate as precise
  marking, then you should use conservative marking, since it's less
  trouble.

But I feel like I'm missing something...