Hi Ömer,
These are pointed to by objects traversed by GC. They have info tables
like any other heap object that GC can understand. I think this is a much
simpler invariant to hold then to have some heap objects point to NULL.
Ryan
On Mon, May 7, 2018 at 3:34 PM, Ömer Sinan Ağacan
Currently we sometimes use special closures to mark end of lists of different objects. Some examples:
- END_TSO_QUEUE - END_STM_WATCH_QUEUE - END_STM_CHUNK_LIST
But we also use NULL for the same thing, e.g. in weak pointer lists (old_weak_ptr_list, weak_ptr_list).
I'm wondering why we need special marker objects (which are actual closures with info tables) instead of using NULL consistently. Current approach causes a minor problem when working on the RTS because every time I traverse a list I need to remember how the list is terminated (e.g. NULL when traversing weak pointer lists, END_TSO_QUEUE when traversing TSO lists).
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