2014-04-26 10:52:28 -04:00
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GC
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2014-04-26 11:54:15 -04:00
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/GC/ [from LISP terminology; Garbage Collect ] 1. vt. To clean up and throw
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away useless things. I think I'll GC the top of my desk today. 2. vt. To
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recycle, reclaim, or put to another use. 3. n. An instantiation of the
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garbage collector process. Garbage collection is computer-science techspeak
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for a particular class of strategies for dynamically but transparently
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reallocating computer memory (i.e., without requiring explicit allocation
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and deallocation by higher-level software). One such strategy involves
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periodically scanning all the data in memory and determining what is no
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longer accessible; useless data items are then discarded so that the memory
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they occupy can be recycled and used for another purpose. Implementations of
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the LISP language usually use garbage collection. In jargon, the full phrase
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is sometimes heard but the abbrev GC is more frequently used because it is
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shorter. Note that there is an ambiguity in usage that has to be resolved by
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context: I'm going to garbage-collect my desk usually means to clean out the
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drawers, but it could also mean to throw away or recycle the desk itself.
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