robustness vs. conservative GC

[Tom Lord]

       Tom:

       > You push in here and it pops out there.  This design would seem to to
       > raise the probability of incorrectly failing to collect some genuinely
       > dead objects, which is an unpredictable and uncontrollable source of
       > arbitrarilly catastrophic failure, sufficiently improbable to escape
       > most testing, and sufficiently serious that it ought not be ignored or
       > swept under the rug with vague (and inaccurate) replies such as "the
       > resulting leaks only waste a little memory" (a specific reply I do not
       > attribute to Hans).

       Hans:

       I usually distinguish [...]

After reading the omitted parts of your reply, I stand by original
statement, except that it would have been more accurate to say
"unpreventable" instead of "uncontrollable", since the alluded to
failures can be deliberately caused -- a form of control which
undermines the value of conservative collectors in numerous
applications.

-t