[bitc-dev] Pools in lieu of GC

[Jonathan S. Shapiro]

On Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 12:42 AM, Mark Miller <erights at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 7:19 PM, Jonathan S. Shapiro <shap at eros-os.com> wrote:
>> More generally, there are NO safe programming languages that support
>> explicit deallocation. GC is the price of eliminating memory safety
>> errors.
>
> Well, although I agree with the thrust of your argument, technically,
> E is both memory safe and supports explicit termination/deallocation
> of vats.

MarkM: it does not assist the discussion to confuse the issue by
conflating two distinct levels of abstraction. Operations at the VAT
level occur outside of the E language level. Your statement is not a
counter-example.

However, my statement does need revision, because there are some newer
explicit allocators that are type safe but not "liveness safe". I'm
thinking of the ones that use type-partitioned heaps.

shap