MEMORY MANAGEMENT IN A PARTIALLY GARBAGE-COLLECTED PROGRAMMING SYSTEM

Memory management to support calls between objects in language environments supp ort automatic garbage collection and language environments requiring explicit control of objec t destruction is provided. Reference counting is used to automatically control the lifetime of ob jects requiring explicit d...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors ROCHAT, KIM LAWSON, NASH, SIMON CHRISTOPHER, THOMSON, BRIAN WARD, CHENG, MICHAEL, HANSON, TIM SCOTT
Format Patent
LanguageEnglish
French
Published 09.11.1998
Edition6
Subjects
CALCULATING
COMPUTING
COUNTING
ELECTRIC DIGITAL DATA PROCESSING
PHYSICS
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Summary:Memory management to support calls between objects in language environments supp ort automatic garbage collection and language environments requiring explicit control of objec t destruction is provided. Reference counting is used to automatically control the lifetime of ob jects requiring explicit destruction and that are to be accessible across the language boundary. A data s tructure is maintained in a runtime component for each object that is accessed over a language boundary . The reference count for each non-garbage collected object is incremented by the runtime in acc ordance with the number of cross-language references held to it. When the count reaches zero thro ugh decrements as the references are returned and destroyed, the non-garbage collected object c an be safely and automatically destroyed. The runtime creates a strong reference to any garbage c ollected object accessed by a cross-language call. The reference is visible to the garbage colle ctor, and prevents the object being collected while the reference is in existence.
Bibliography:Application Number: CA19972225932