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Python vs Ruby

Greg Jorgensen gregj at pobox.com
Thu Jan 25 14:39:22 EST 2001 
According to the article below, Ruby uses a mark-and-sweep garbage
collector. I don't know if that is more "real" than reference counting
or not. In my experience mark-and-sweep garbage collectors sometimes
cause unpredictable and sometimes lengthy stalls during execution, but
I haven't used Ruby so I don't know how good the implementation is.

More Ruby info is here:

http://www.ddj.com/articles/2001/0101/0101b/0101b.htm


In article <p6qwvbjtr97.fsf at informatik.hu-berlin.de>,
  Martin von Loewis <loewis at informatik.hu-berlin.de> wrote:
> "James Lockley" <jpl at global.co.za> writes:
>
> > Just been reading a "Ruby centric" comparison of Ruby vs Python on:
> > http://helium.ruby-lang.org/en/compar.html
> Incorrect is the claim
>   Ruby has "real" garbage collector, not ref-counting.
>
> While this is correct also, it implies that Python has ref-counting
> and no "real" garbage collector, which is not true for Python 2.0.
>
> The implication of the conclusion
> #  Not subject to memory leaks like ref-counting is.
>
> is likewise incorrect - in Python 2.0, the memory leaks of reference
> counting disappear also. The implication from the other conclusion
> #  No INCREF, DECREF are required for extensions.
> is still correct - INCREF, DECREF are required for extensions.
> I don't know how exactly GC works in Ruby - it is likely that
> it suffers from things that people would consider as drawbacks,
though.

--
Greg Jorgensen
Portland, Oregon, USA
gregj at pobox.com


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