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Date: Thu, 23 Dec 1999 17:54:04 +0100
From: Damien Doligez <Damien.Doligez@inria.fr>
Message-Id: <199912231654.RAA10243@tobago.inria.fr>
To: caml-list@inria.fr
Subject: Re:  Gc Question
Sender: weis

>From: skaller <skaller@maxtal.com.au>

>How does (or should I say 'can') the garbage collector
>tell the difference between a pointer to a structured block,
>and a pointer to something else (outside the caml heap)?

Quite simply, a pointer to outside the heap points outside the heap...
Concretely, this is done by dividing the memory into 4k "pages" and
having a table of bytes to tell for each page whether it is in the
heap.


>unless
>the collector 'knows' where all structure blocks live
>and tests for that. [Conservative collectors often do just that]
>Is this the case??

In short, yes, although the collector doesn't know about each block
individually.


-- Damien