| Title | Purpose of allocation frames/SNC pool class are unclear |
| Status | closed |
| Priority | nice |
| Assigned user | Gareth Rees |
| Organization | Ravenbrook |
| Description | It's not clear what the use cases are for allocation frames and the SNC pool class, nor whether the benefits can be realized in practice. What should we say in the documentation?
It would also be nice to know what the "No Checking" in "Stack No Checking" refers to. RB suggests that this might be because it's intended for use on the back end of a compiler that enforces the pairing of pushes and pops. |
| Analysis | The purpose of SNC is to implement stack languages like PostScript and Forth, where some objects live in stack frames and are known to be dead when the stack is popped. The "No Checking" means that the garbage collector does not check to see if the objects are really did when the stack frame is popped: it is assumed that the language can ensure that objects that escape the stack are copied to the heap. |
| How found | inspection |
| Evidence | None. |
| Observed in | 1.110.0 |
| Created by | Gareth Rees |
| Created on | 2012-10-24 15:48:00 |
| Last modified by | Gareth Rees |
| Last modified on | 2016-04-13 17:55:50 |
| History | 2012-10-24 GDR Created. |