HCoop / hcoop / debian / mlton.git / blame
| Commit | Line | Data |
|---|---|---|
| 7f918cf1 CE |
1 | Reachability |
| 2 | ============ | |
| 3 | ||
| 4 | Reachability is a notion dealing with the graph of heap objects | |
| 5 | maintained at runtime. Nodes in the graph are heap objects and edges | |
| 6 | correspond to the pointers between heap objects. As the program runs, | |
| 7 | it allocates new objects (adds nodes to the graph), and those new | |
| 8 | objects can contain pointers to other objects (new edges in the | |
| 9 | graph). If the program uses mutable objects (refs or arrays), it can | |
| 10 | also change edges in the graph. | |
| 11 | ||
| 12 | At any time, the program has access to some finite set of _root_ | |
| 13 | nodes, and can only ever access nodes that are reachable by following | |
| 14 | edges from these root nodes. Nodes that are _unreachable_ can be | |
| 15 | garbage collected. | |
| 16 | ||
| 17 | == Also see == | |
| 18 | ||
| 19 | * <:MLtonFinalizable:> | |
| 20 | * <:MLtonWeak:> |