Re: GC and file descriptors (and external resources.in general, I guess)

[Dirk Herrmann]

On 1 Nov 2000, Michael Livshin wrote:

> to clarify my motives, I've stumbled across this issue while
> implementing lazy sweep behavior for the GC.  when sweep is lazy, you
> really want to at least finish the sweep when you get EMFILE from
> `open'.  a full GC may not even be necessary.

Another problem with lazy sweep is, that if gc is triggered because of
scm_must_malloc, then a lazy sweep won't help:  To be sure that all
available memory for scm_must_malloc has been freed you would also have to
first finish the sweep completely (unlazily), then see if enough memory is
available for the mallocing, and if not, do a gc with a full sweep again.

Sorry if I was just stating the obvious...

Best regards
Dirk