[comp.theory] Stash Collection

yost@DPW.COM (David A. Yost) (11/27/90)

Garbage collection reclaims memory that is no longer
referenced.  How about an additional general mechanism
which reclaims memory that is still referenced, but is
dispensable?  (This might be called Stash Collection.)

The idea is that when GC can't make enough room to satisfy
a request, it invokes SC, which looks around for objects
that will volunteer to give up some memory they don't really
need, such as cached data or multiple reperesentations of
the same data.

Has anyone developed such a mechanism?

 --dave yost
   yost@dpw.com or uunet!esquire!yost
   Please don't use other mangled forms you may see
   in the From, Reply-To, or CC fields above.