[self-interest] Re: self-interest digest

[Mario Wolczko]

> Ain't this a bit strange? I mean, if I (a Self programmer) remove all references to
> an object (and I guess for us Self programmers the lobby is THE root) by removing
> it from the lobby, shouldn't the VM garbage collect the object? 

What I'm saying is that the lobby is not the only root, nor can it
be.  All those other objects have to exist too.  For example, there
has to be a true object because you can write 1 _Equals: 1 and the VM
has to return _something_.  Similarly for all the other objects whose
existence is implied by the language (nil, true, the assignment
object, prototypical activations, etc.), their parents, and their
mirrors.  The object ID array is there because otherwise you wouldn't
be able to refer to the results of expressions entered at the VM
prompt. 

Anything not reachable from the set of roots (as enumerated in my
earlier email) _will_ be GCed.

Mario

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