I had a funny epiphany earlier today. I was at a meeting in which
someone was presenting a C++ class library he had developed, which
included such things a List, Hash-table, string, and some other basic
stuff.
also presented was a "vocabulary", which is a complex object cluster
featuring a hash-table of words, a special 'constructor' function which
allows you to create and load a vocabulary from a file. if you call this
constructor more than once, it doesn't reload the file into a new
vocabulary, but gives you the existing one (because vocabs can get VERY
large), and increments the "reference counter" to this object.
"REFERENCE COUNTER" ??? I asked. and yes, it does what you think it
does.
it then dawned on me that I have been wrong all along about C++.
C++ DOES have a garbage collector, and here I have been saying for years
it didn't. it's ME! I'm the garbage collector if I write C++. and all
I have to do is reference counting.
hahahahahaha !
-- clint
isn't NSF one of those things the Republicans want to cut off at the knees?