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>> The reason we like "conservative collectors" is because we can be lazy >> while programming and not worry about what does and doesn't have to be >> visible to the collector. >I thought the reason we liked conservative collectors is that they >work even when interacting with arbitrary C code. Well in the case of guile, GC seems to be only stack-conservitive, so you have to think about it anyway. The reason I like precise GC is partly because I think all objects should be subject to GC, even objects that refer to external identities like file descriptors, and stuff like that. For all the same reasons its good to GC memory, it's also good to GC file descriptors. But I don't trust a conservative GC enough to do that. And I also wonder what will happen if by some coincidence a program allocates some big chunks of memory whose addresses just happen to correspond to numbers held in memory. It just worries me. Part of a programmers ideal to take care of every case and not have anything non-deterministic.