Non-freeing GC memory management

[Chris Wright via Digitalmars-d]

On Tue, 17 Nov 2015 19:32:03 +0000, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

> On Tuesday, 17 November 2015 at 19:27:15 UTC, tcak wrote:
>> As far as I know, GC has a separate thread that stops all other threads
>> periodically to clear the unused memory fields.
> 
> That is a common misconception...
> 
>> What disadvantages would we have if GC was to be freeing memory only
>> when allocation is requested, and not checking periodically?
> 
> This is what it actually does now.

And, as I understand it, it will only trigger a collection if it doesn't 
already have any free memory of the correct size. There might be 
something else to ensure the collector doesn't run too often.