RE: The Lua 5.1(work) GC

["Jasmin Patry" <jpatry@...>]

> Not at all. Quite the opposite: we also have little idea of 
> what this factor (and the other constants as well) should be. 
> We need real users with real uses (like you!!) to give us 
> feedback about these tunnings.
> (One concern is that, if the collector is too much agressive, 
> it may slow down regular applications. Maybe this factor 
> should be variable??)

I think making it a variable would make sense.  Some applications can
easily live with a less aggressive GC (e.g., relatively small footprints
apps running on PCs), while others would need a more aggressive version
(e.g., apps for embedded devices, console games).  Some apps might even
want to control the aggressiveness of the GC at runtime...?


> This is an interesting addition. My only question is: why the 
> loop? Why not a single call to luaC_step? Each program can 
> make its own loop (with its own criteria). After all, "data" 
> has no clear meaning anyway.

The only reason the loop is there is that it was convenient for my
purpose.  Also,

   lua_gc( L, LUA_GCSTEP, 8 ) /* run the GC for 8 steps */

seemed fairly intuitive.  But it's by no means essential, since as you
said the loop can be done in the user app.

Thanks,
Jasmin