Reference counting
Reference counting is a technique that's used for keeping the count of references, pointers, and handles to resources. Memory blocks, disk space, and objects are good examples of resources. This technique tracks each object as a resource. The metrics that are tracked are the number of references held by different objects. The objects are recovered when they can never be referenced again.
The number of references is used for runtime optimizations. Deutsch-Bobrow came up with the strategy of reference counting. This strategy was related to the number of updated references that were produced by references that were put in local variables. Henry Baker came up with a method that includes references in local variables that are ...
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