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ABSTRACT

Stoye's one-bit reference tagging scheme can be extended to local counts of two or more via two strategies. The first, suited to pure register transactions, is a cache of referents to two shared references. The analog of Deutsch's and Bobrow's multiple-reference table, this cache is sufficient to manage small counts across successive assignment statements. Thus, accurate reference counts above one can be tracked for short intervals, like those bridging one function's environment to its successor's.The second, motivated by runtime stacks that duplicate references, avoids counting any references from the stack. It requires a local pointer-inversion protocol in the mutator, but one still local to the referent and the stack frame. Thus, an accurate reference count of one can be maintained regardless of references from the recursion stack.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.4 OPERATING SYSTEMS
      D.4.2 Storage Management
          Subjects: Allocation/deallocation strategies

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.4 OPERATING SYSTEMS
      D.4.2 Storage Management
          Subjects: Garbage collection

  E. Data
  E.2 DATA STORAGE REPRESENTATIONS
      Subjects: Linked representations

  G. Mathematics of Computing
  G.4 MATHEMATICAL SOFTWARE
      Subjects: Algorithm design and analysis

General Terms:
Algorithms, Design, Languages, Measurement, Theory

Keywords:
MRB, garbage collection, multiple reference bit, storage management