Re: [Chicken-hackers] [PATCH] catch exceptions in finalizers, remove dynamic resizing of finalizer vector

[Felix]

From: John Cowan <address@hidden>
Subject: Re: [Chicken-hackers] [PATCH] catch exceptions in finalizers, remove 
dynamic resizing of finalizer vector
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2012 15:12:30 -0400

> Peter Bex scripsit:
> 
>> The GC needs to be able to associate an object with its finalizers, so
>> there either needs to be a global list or some extra slot added to
>> each object.  The latter takes up more memory when you don't have a lot
>> of finalizers (and finalizers are slow, so it's best not to generate too
>> many of them).
> 
> How about if finalizers are only attached to pointers?  That seems to
> be the principal use case, and adding a slot to a pointer (maybe only a
> "finalizable tagged pointer" wouldn't be so expensive.

Allowing finalization only for pointers would be an unecessary
restriction. Adding an extra slot to arbitrary objects is more
difficult than it sounds and has implications to just about
everything.


cheers,
felix