Reference Counting
This question is about a possible implementation of garbage collection for Lisp. Both impure and pure Lisp have lambda abstraction, function application, and elementary functions atom, eq, car, cdr, and cons. Impure Lisp also has rplaca, rplacd, and other functions that have side effects on memory cells.
Reference counting is a simple garbage-collection scheme that associates a refer- ence count with each datum in memory. When memory is allocated, the associated reference count is set to 0. When a pointer is set to point to a location, the count for that location is incremented. If a pointer to a location is reset or destroyed, the count for the location is decremented. Consequently, the reference count always tells how many pointers there are to a given datum. When a count reaches 0, the datum is considered garbage and is returned to the free-storage list. For example, after evaluation of (cdr (cons (cons 'A 'B) (cons 'C 'D))), the cell created for (cons 'A 'B) is garbage, but the cell for (cons 'C 'D) is not.
(a) Describe how reference counting could be used for garbage collection in eval- uating the following expression:
(car (cdr (cons (cons a b) (cons c d))))
where a, b, c, and d are previously de?ned names for cells. Assume that the reference counts for a, b, c,and d are initially set to some numbers greater than 0, so that these do not become garbage. Assume that the result of the entire expression is not garbage. How many of the three cons cells generated by the evaluation of this expression can be returned to the free-storage list?
(b) The "impure" Lisp function rplaca takes as arguments a cons cell c and a value v and modi?es c's address ?eld to point to v. Note that this operation does not produce a new cons cell; it modi?es the one it receives as an argument. The function rplacd performs the same function with respect the decrement portion of its argument cons cell.
Lisp programs that use rplaca or rplacd may create memory structures that cannot be garbage collected properly by reference counting. Describe a con?g- uration of cons cells that can be created by use of operations of pure Lisp and rplaca and rplacd. Explain why the reference-counting algorithm deos not work properly on this structure.