In computer science, reference counting is a technique of storing the number of references, pointers, or handles to a resource such as an object, block of memory, disk space or other resource. It may also refer, more specifically, to a garbage collection algorithm that uses these reference counts to deallocate objects which are no longer referenced.
Read more about Reference Counting: Use in Garbage Collection, Advantages and Disadvantages, Graph Interpretation, Dealing With Inefficiency of Updates, Dealing With Reference Cycles, Variants of Reference Counting
Famous quotes containing the words reference and/or counting:
“A sign, or representamen, is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is, creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign. That sign which it creates I call the interpretant of the first sign. The sign stands for something, its object. It stands for that object, not in all respects, but in reference to a sort of idea, which I have sometimes called the ground of the representamen.”
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