Reference counting isn’t garbage collection, so I would just call this ref counted threads.
GC’d environments already have what you’re describing. This is how Java threads work. This is also how Fil-C’s low level zthread abstraction works. In those systems you can join a thread if you want to, but if you don’t, it’ll free its memory anyway.
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[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 17.2 ms ] thread> No zombie threads
Is this a problem in need of a solution?
There was a proposal for a similar feature in Go [0], but it was abandoned due to technical infeasibilty.
What exactly are the rules for when a thread is garbage collected in W++?
[0] github.com/golang/go/issues/19702
It might be good to expand on that, for those of us that don't remember the original W++ :)
GC’d environments already have what you’re describing. This is how Java threads work. This is also how Fil-C’s low level zthread abstraction works. In those systems you can join a thread if you want to, but if you don’t, it’ll free its memory anyway.