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GC /G-C/
[from LISP terminology; `Garbage Collect']
1. vt. To clean up and throw away useless things. "I think I'll
GC the top of my desk today." When said of files, this is
equivalent to GFR. 2. vt. To recycle, reclaim, or put to
another use. 3. n. An instantiation of the garbage collector
process.
`Garbage collection' is computer-science techspeak for a
particular class of strategies for dynamically but transparently
reallocating computer memory (i.e., without requiring explicit
allocation and deallocation by higher-level software). One such
strategy involves periodically scanning all the data in memory and
determining what is no longer accessible; useless data items are
then discarded so that the memory they occupy can be recycled and
used for another purpose. Implementations of the LISP language
usually use garbage collection.
In jargon, the full phrase is sometimes heard but the abbrev
GC is more frequently used because it is shorter. Note that there
is an ambiguity in usage that has to be resolved by context: "I'm
going to garbage-collect my desk" usually means to clean out the
drawers, but it could also mean to throw away or recycle the desk
itself.
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