[RFC] type safe trees

[Andrew Haley]

Ian Lance Taylor writes:
 >   Exception handling will obviously be useful in
 > the parser and probably other places--and we are already using C++, so
 > why not use exception handling?

I'd be a bit nervous about using exceptions to backtrack in the
parser.  Such exceptions happen a lot, and the DWARF unwinder is rather
slow for routinely thrown exceptions.  Exceptions should be
exceptional...

 > I'll repeat that if we are really going to switch languages, it would
 > sure be nice to switch to one which supported garbage collection,
 > instead of carrying around our own GC machinery.

I think that you must distinguish between languages that support
garbage collection and those that force you to use garbage collection
for everything.  I imagine that in C++ you can support garbage
collection pretty well.

Andrew.