Explict Memory Managment

[Brendan Eich]

As Ash points out, there's no memory-safe way to implement obj.kill()  
short of a full GC.

There is no way JS will lose memory safety, ever!

What's more, we shouldn't expose a gc() call. It would only be abused  
over time. Even if it were used well at first for a given browser  
engine (or version), the tendency over time would be for it to be  
called too much, and for too many (or all) user agents. It would be  
symptom-treating at best.

Explicit memory management is sometimes important, e.g. using a  
preallocated array or native buffer when pushing pixels. This is not a  
case where gc() or obj.kill() helps, though.

If you find poor GC performance, file a bug with the browser vendor or  
open source project. If you are using too much memory, reifying large  
external data sets in JS, don't do that. There's usually a way to  
avoid taking the all-in-memory hit. SAX-style parsing rather than all- 
or-nothing blocking parse calls, etc.

I hate to generalize, but on the other hand the post asking for  
explicit memory management was short on specific details -- including  
ones that might lead to specific browser bugs that could be fixed to  
the benefit of all developers.

/be