Garbage Collection: Algorithms for Automatic Dynamic Memory Management (Hardcover)

by Richard Jones (Author), Rafael D Lins (Author) "The chief drawback of copying collectors is the need to divide the available memory into two semi-spaces..." (more)
Key Phrases: deferred reference counting, heap occupancy, mostly copying collector, Common Lisp, Peyton Jones, Hans Boehm (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
The memory storage requirements of complex programs are extremely difficult to manage correctly by hand. A single error may lead to indeterminate and inexplicable program crashes. Worse still, failures are often unrepeatable and may surface only long after the program has been delivered to the customer. The eradication of memory errors typically consumes a substantial amount of development time. And yet the answer is relatively easy — garbage collection; removing the clutter of memory management from module interfaces, which then frees the programmer to concentrate on the problem at hand rather than low-level book-keeping details. For this reason, most modern object-oriented languages such as Smalltalk, Eiffel, Java and Dylan, are supported by garbage collection. Garbage collecting, libraries are even available for such uncooperative languages as C and C++. This book considers how dynamic memory can be recycled automatically to guarantee error-free memory management. There is an abundant but disparate literature on the subject, largely confined to research papers. This book sets out to pool this experience in a single accessible and unified framework. Visit this books companion Website for updates, revisions, online gc resources, bibliography and links to more gc sites ‘Whatever else Java has accomplished, it has finally brought garbage collection into the mainstream. The efficiency and correctness of garbage collection algorithms is henceforth going to be of concern to hundreds of thousands of programmers; those who really care about this could do no better than to start with Garbage Collection: Algorithms for Automatic Dynamic Memory Management… the sort of comprehensive engineering manual that is so rare in computing. Dr Dobbs Journal

From the Back Cover
The memory storage requirements of complex programs are extremely difficult to manage correctly by hand. A single error may lead to indeterminate and inexplicable program crashes. Worse still, failures are often unrepeatable and may surface only long after the program has been delivered to the customer. The eradication of memory errors typically consumes a substantial amount of development time. And yet the answer is relatively easy — garbage collection; removing the clutter of memory management from module interfaces, which then frees the programmer to concentrate on the problem at hand rather than low-level book-keeping details. For this reason, most modern object-oriented languages such as Smalltalk, Eiffel, Java and Dylan, are supported by garbage collection. Garbage collecting, libraries are even available for such uncooperative languages as C and C++. This book considers how dynamic memory can be recycled automatically to guarantee error-free memory management. There is an abundant but disparate literature on the subject, largely confined to research papers. This book sets out to pool this experience in a single accessible and unified framework. Visit this books companion Website for updates, revisions, online gc resources, bibliography and links to more gc sites ‘Whatever else Java has accomplished, it has finally brought garbage collection into the mainstream. The efficiency and correctness of garbage collection algorithms is henceforth going to be of concern to hundreds of thousands of programmers; those who really care about this could do no better than to start with Garbage Collection: Algorithms for Automatic Dynamic Memory Management… the sort of comprehensive engineering manual that is so rare in computing. Dr Dobbs Journal

Product Details

• Hardcover: 404 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (September 17, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471941484
• ISBN-13: 978-0471941484
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #170,393 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book, March 22, 2003

By	Ambika N. Sukla "Ambika Sukla" (USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Garbage collection is a very interesting and complicated topic. To understand different garbage collection algorithms, one has to go through various research papers published over last 30 years or read the simplified descriptions presented in Java site and Bill Venners artima.com. This book does an excellent job in putting together all these algorithms in a logical order that gives us a chance to understand the different challenges sceintists and programming language authors faced and how the algorithms evolved over the time. The book starts with basic overview and history of commonly known algorithms: Reference counting, Mark and Sweep, and Copying algorithms. It then elaborates each of these algorithms, enumerates their pros and cons, and presents imporvements done by different researchers. After this, the book moves on to advanced algorithms like Generational algorithm and concurrent mark and sweep algorithm. I recommend this book to anyone interested in garbage collection. I haven't seen any other book on this topic. Even for programmers who mostly don't have to worry about GC as it is "automatically" done, this is a good book to understand and appreciate what goes on behind the scenes. Also, knowledge of the concepts in this book will be invaluable in performance tuning.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book, October 22, 2005

By	Jos van Roosmalen (The Netherlands, Europe) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is really a great book. It's really a must have for people who want to write their own modern virtual machine (like I).

This is simply the only book about Garbage Collection you can get. It's very complete: all GC Algorithmes are covered by this book in depth! All topics are properly introduced it has a nice layout, and offer snippets of pseudocode. It is not really a dry text.

If you want to read scientific papers about Garbage Collectors (like of ACM), it's recommended to read first this book, to get a proper introduction in this topic.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Category killer, May 3, 2007

By	Jason Evans (Coeur d'Alene, ID USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is superb. It is thorough enough that there is little need for a practitioner to read the primary literature, even when contemplating sophisticated garbage collector designs. I remember being intimidated by garbage collection prior to reading this book, but now I am instead enthralled by garbage collection. Given the trend toward automatic memory management in programming languages, I think this book is an increasingly important part of the practicing programmer's library.

The first time I read the book, it seemed a bit repetitive, because the first two chapters provide the basic framework for the rest of the book. As a result, topics such as copying collection are discussed in at least two places. Upon reflection though, I think that there is no better way to organize the book, because there exists no straight path through all of the concepts the book covers.

Over the past eight years I have read portions of this book over and over as I've contemplated garbage collector designs for various software projects. I continue to be surprised at just how well this book meets my needs.