GC

[DEUTSCH]

I have (apparently ) finally encountered a situation where I really
need to know under precisely what circumstances the G.C. will delete
an entry from a hash array.  I have a (unfortunately large) program
which works properly if I do MINFS(25000) and RECLAIM) before I
start running it, but if I don't, it blows up with a NON-NUMERIC ARG
NIL which results from something which it "knows" is in a hash array
not being there.  In the latter case, a GC: 8 occurs during a phase
of the computation when there are many hash arrays being
filled which will be examined later.

Just to explain my current understanding: it is my impression that
the G.C. will delete an entry from a hash array if the key
(the thing you give to GETHASH) is otherwise reclaimable, i.e. if
there are no references to the key other than from entry keys in
hash arrays, and the key is not a small number or litatom.
If this is true, I think it may be what is screwing me, since
I think I may have hash arrays which at some point in their lives
only exist to be scanned with MAPHASH and whose keys no longer have
references to them in some cases.  (This is not a contrived situation:
imagine a system for manipulating sets which represents sets as
hash arrays.  Then the keys almost certainly have no other references
to them, and the ONLY important use of the arrays is MAPHASH.)
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