[mortoray]

I (author) actually agree that reference counting is a form of garbage collection. However, in most dicussions about memory management the generic term garbage collection tends to refer to scanning collectors. In particualr, people who often oppose my views on scanning GCs are the ones that actually use the term garbage collector to refer to those types of collectors.

Most places I see talking about reference counting just say reference counting, sometimes mentioning memory management. Automatic memory management is perhaps the most generic term.

How reference counting actually works is covered in my previous article, which I wrote as a lead-up to this one. It covers the particulars of how memroy coherency is the primary cost of reference counting.

[michaelfeathers]

There is a lot of data on this topic.

This is a good starting place: http://www.amazon.com/Garbage-Collection-Algorithms-Automati...