CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c++garbage-collection
Bartosz Radaczyński
Bartosz Radaczyński

Reputation: 18574

What garbage collectors are there available for C++?

What garbage collectors are there available for C++? Are you using any of them? With what results?

Upvotes: 6

Views: 731

Answers (6)

Nemanja Trifunovic
Nemanja Trifunovic

Reputation: 24557

You can find several implementations here. I have never tried any of them and in general I find a non-deterministic GC causing more harm than good.

Upvotes: 2

Randolpho
Randolpho

Reputation: 56448

There's always, ahem: C++/CLI -- C++ for the .NET Framework. Pretty good garbage collection there. :p

Although, to be honest, with all the syntactic sugar they put in there, you could almost consider it a whole new language that just happens to work with C/C++ fairly well.

If you're not married to C++ as a language, you could also look into D, which compiles to native code like C++ (and unlike C++/CLI) but also has garbage collection.

Upvotes: 2

Philippe Payant
Philippe Payant

Reputation: 134

The Boehm garbage collector is pretty good for C, but tricky to use under C++. Check the "C++ interface" section at http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Hans_Boehm/gc/gcinterface.html.

My opinion is that if you need garbage collection, choose a langage that has it built-in.

The best general solution for C++ is shared pointers (from boost for example) with you dealing with circular dependencies. There are two things you can do: 1. design the thing with no circular dependencies 2. design the thing with a 'linch-pin' that breaks the circle to allow reclamation of the objects

Either you deal with real bad, convoluted, hard to debug problems with a garbage collector for C++ or you deal with the simpler classical problem of freeing your objects when you are done with them.

Upvotes: 5

Luc Hermitte
Luc Hermitte

Reputation: 32986

Several C++ GC are listed on wikipedia.

However, I don't use any, RAII is also my friend.

Upvotes: 5

rmeador
rmeador

Reputation: 25724

The Boost library includes some shared_ptr stuff that basically acts as a reference counting garbage collector. If you embrace the RAII principle of C++ design, that and auto_ptr will fill your need for a "garbage collector".

Upvotes: 6

Harper Shelby
Harper Shelby

Reputation: 16581

The only one I've heard of personally is the Boehm garbage collector I'm sure others exist, but I've not dealt with them (or looked for them either).

Upvotes: 4

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