Memory Management

Abstract

An important component of an abstract machine’s interpreter is the one dealing with memory management. If this component can be extremely simple in a physical machine, memory management for an abstract machine for a high-level language is fairly complicated and can employ a range of techniques. In this chapter we will see both static and dynamic management and will examine activation records, the system stack and the heap. One section in particular is dedicated to the data structures and mechanisms used to implement scope rules. Conceptually, garbage-collection techniques, techniques for the automatic recovery of memory allocated in a heap, are included in memory management. To make the presentation more coherent, these techniques will be explained in Chap. 8, after having dealt with data types and pointers.