Garbage collection/Talk

This page needs to be moved to a less misleading title, such as [Garbage collection in memory management]?, or something like that. See naming conventions. --LMS

Just because you think [Garbage collection as a civic service]? is more important than [Garbage collection as a memory management strategy]?? Obviously there is a context and bias problem, but I came to this page and found what I expected (I used to write garbage collectors for a living). I assume you did not? --drj Hmm. My comments were clearly written too hastily. I don't mean to be that harsh, but the fence has two sides, and people live on both sides of it. --drj

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determine what data objects in a program cannot possibly be needed; throw them away. Is this correct? My understanding of copying collection is that nothing is actually thrown away, but rather that reachable objects are explicitly kept. If that is the case, then wouldn't that phrasing be a bit misleading? --maw?

The storage used by the objects that are collected is reclaimed by some means, presumably to be used again for the creation of fresh objects. Thrown away is too imprecise, will edit. --drj