jack@citcom.UUCP (Jack Waugh) (09/03/87)
Maybe what we need is reference-counted objects. Of course, libraries already are, but you'd have to extend that to other resources. Like Smalltalk objects, each object would point (through some amount of indirection and/or mapping) to a procedure to delete it. Every object (such as a process) that could have references to other objects would have to maintain a list of the objects referenced. Circular garbage would be possible, but I don't think this would be a practical problem on a machine that gets rebooted every few weeks.