garbage collection

[Richard Schroeppel <rcs@CS.Arizona.EDU>]

In Lisp systems, typical garbage collector behavior is to bump memory
by *2 or +20% when insufficient free space is returned (<20%).  If
we've hit the upper limit and can't or won't get more, the user
deserves a message, and maybe an opportunity to increase the limits.
This is an area where "one behavior fits all needs" isn't right.  If
I'm on a single user machine, I may be willing to live with the thing
grinding to a near halt in order to let my computation finish; or
maybe not.

Rich Schroeppel   rcs@cs.arizona.edu