A note on compacting garbage collection
John Fitch · The Computer Journal · 1978
A variation of the Haddon and Waite compacting garbage collector is presented that needs only bounded workspace, but which has typical runtime proportional to the size of the heap rather than n log n for a heap of size n. The algorithm has been measured in the context of a LISP system where it has been seen to behave close to its optimum. The relationship of this algorithm to one due to Lang and Weigbreit is also explained.