A simple method to remove reference counting in applicative programs
S. Skedzielewski, Robert J. Simpson · OSTI OAI (U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information) · 1988
The efficient compilation of applicative languages that contain data structures such as arrays or records may require that the compiler use a dynamic memory allocator for structured objects. If so, the overhead of reference counting in applicative langauges can be considerable, if a compiler simply adds code for reference counting to each operations that references an object. Fortunately , not all the reference counting is necessary for correctness. This paper discusses the use of data dependence information to statically remove reference counting operations. In addition, this method preserves all of the parallelism that was present in the original code and, in some cases, points out opportunities where structured objects can be destructively reused (updated-in-place). 10 refs., 5 figs.