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Asked: 2026-05-12T10:00:22+00:00

I want to learn the theory behind garbage collection. How do i go about

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I want to learn the theory behind garbage collection. How do i go about it? The obvious answer is – a compiler textbook… The question is, is it necessary to learn lexical analysis, parsing and other stuff that usually precedes garbage collection in a text?

In short, what are the prerequisites to learning about Garbage collection theory?

P.S – I do know what is the purpose of parsing, lexical analysis etc. Just not how they are implemented.

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  1. Editorial Team

    Read these papers in order. They are in progressive subject matter/difficulty order (not chronological).

    List taken directly from Prof. Kathryn McKinley’s Memory Management course page here, where you’ll find links to all the articles.

    I took the course last semester, so I read all these and I have to say I learned what I set out to learn!

    Note that links to freely-available copies of most of the papers below are included in the garbage-collection tag wiki at https://stackoverflow.com/tags/garbage-collection/info.

    • List processing in real time on a serial computer, Baker, CACM, 21(4) 280–294, 1978.
    • A nonrecursive list compacting algorithm , Cheney, CACM, 13(11): 677–678, 1970.
    • A Real-time garbage collector based on the lifetimes of objects, Lieberman & Hewitt, CACM, 26(6): 419–429, 1983.
    • Generation scavenging: A non-disruptive high-performance storage reclamation algorithm, Ungar, Proceedings of the first ACM SIGSOFT/SIGPLAN Software Engineering Symposium on Practical Software Development Environments, 1984, pages 157–167.
    • Simple generational garbage collection and fast allocation, Appel, Software–Practice and Experience 19(2):171-183, February 1989.
    • Age-Based Garbage Collection, D. Stefanovic, K. S. McKinley, J. E. B. Moss, ACM Conference on Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages and Applications. (OOPSLA), pp. 370–381. Denver CO, November 1999.
    • Older-first Garbage Collection in Practice: Evaluation in a Java Virtual Machine, D. Stefanovic, M. Hertz, S. M. Blackburn, K. S. McKinley, and J. E. B. Moss, Memory System Performance, Berlin, Germany, pp. 175–184, June 2002.
    • Beltway: Getting Around Garbage Collection Gridlock, S. M. Blackburn, R. Jones, K. S. McKinley, and J. E. B. Moss, ACM Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation, Berlin, Germany, pp. 153–164, June 2002.
    • An efficient machine-independent procedure for garbage collection in various list structures, Schorr & Waite, CACM, 10(8): 501–506, 1967.
    • Comparison of compacting algorithms for garbage collection, Cohen & Nicolau, ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS), Volume 5, Issue 4, pages 532–553, October 1983.
    • MC2: High-Performance Garbage Collection for Memory-Constrained Environments, Sachindran, Berger & Moss, ACM Conference on Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages and Applications, pp. 81-96, Vancouver, BC, October 2004.
    • Immix: A Mark-Region Garbage Collector with Space Efficiency, Fast Collection, and Mutator Performance, Blackburn & McKinley, ACM Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation, pp.22–32, Tucson, AZ, June 2008.
    • An Efficient Incremental Automatic Garbage Collector, Deutsch & Bobrow, CACM, 19(9): 522–526, September 1976.
    • Ulterior Reference Counting: Fast Garbage Collection without the Wait, S. M. Blackburn and K. S. McKinley , Proceedings of the ACM 2003 SIGPLAN Conference on Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages and Applications, pp. 344-359, Annehiem, CA, October 2003.
    • Cycle Tracing: Efficient Concurrent Mark-Sweep Cycle Collection, Frampton & Blackburn, 2009. (In submission to ISMM.)
    • Multiprocessing compactifying garbage collection, Guy L. Steele, Jr., CACM 18(9): 495-508, 1975.
    • On-the-fly garbage collection: an exercise in cooperation, E. W. Dijkstra, L. Lamport, A. J. Martin, C. S. Scholten, and E. F. M. Steffens, Communications of the ACM, 21(11):966–975, November 1978.
    • Correctness-Preserving Derivation of Concurrent Garbage Collection Algorithms, Vechev, Yahav, and Bacon, ACM Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation, Ottawa, Ontario, pp. 341-353, 2006.
    • A Real-time Garbage Collector with Low Overhead and Consistent Utilization, Bacon, Cheng, and Rajan, ACM Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages, New Orleans, Louisiana, pp. 285-298, 2003.
    • Tax-and-spend: democratic scheduling for real-time garbage collection, Auerbach, Bacon, Cheng, Grove, Biron, Gracie, McCloskey, Micic, and Sciampacone, ACM International Conference On Embedded Software, Atlanta, GA, pp. 245-254, 2008.
    • Garbage collection in an uncooperative environment, H. Boehm and M. Weiser, Software Practice and Experience, 18(9):807-820, 1988.
    • Hoard: A Scalable Memory Allocator for Multithreaded Applications, E. D. Berger, K. S. McKinley, R. D. Blumofe, and P. R. Wilson, The Ninth International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems, Cambridge, MA, pp. 117–128, November 2000.
    • Cork: Dynamic Memory Leak Detection for Garbage-Collected Languages,Jump & McKinley, In submission to ACM Transactions on Software Practice & Experience, 2009. (Abbreviated version appears in ACM Conference on Programming Languagesm, Nice, France, January 2009.)
    • Leak Pruning, Bond & McKinley, ACM Conference on Architecture Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems, Washington, DC, March 2009. (To appear.)
    • Free-me: A Static Analysis for Individual Object Reclamation, Guyer & McKinley, ACM Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation, Ottawa, Canada, pp. 364-375, June 2006.
    • Garbage collection can be faster than stack allocation, Appel, Information Processing Letters 25(4):275-279, 17 June 1987.
    • The Garbage Collection Advantage: Improving Program Locality Huang, Blackburn, McKinley, Moss, Wang, & Cheng, ACM Conference on Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages, & Applications, Vancouver, BC, pp. 69-80, October 2004.
    • Demystifying Magic: High-level Low-level Programming, Daniel Frampton, Stephen M. Blackburn, Perry Cheng, Robin Garner, David P. Grove, J. Eliot B. Moss & Sergey I. Salishev. ACM International Conference on Virtual Execution Environments, Washington DC, March 2009. (To appear.)
    • Myths and Realities: The Performance Impact of Garbage Collection, S. M. Blackburn, P. Cheng, and K. S. McKinley, ACM SIGMETRICS Conference on Measurement & Modeling Computer Systems, pp. 25–36, New York, NY, June 2004.
    • A unified theory of garbage collection, Bacon, Cheng, & Rajan, ACM Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications, Vancouver, BC, Canada, pp. 50-68, 2004.
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