GC, exit-to-system

[David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>]

    Date: Thu, 10 Jul 86 16:54:22+0900
    From: Masayuki Ida <a37078%ccut.u-tokyo.junet%utokyo-relay.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>

    In the discussion of our committee,
    we wondered why the names of the functions for
     gc, and exit to system
    are NOT defined in CL.
    I am only thinking of the interface naming, not the contents, like editor 
    interface is defined in CL but the editor subsystem is not defined yet.

    I think the unified name for them can be defined in CL.
    like,
     GC &optional parameters        [function]
     and
     BYE                            [function]

To give you an example of how much different systems can vary, neither
of these interfaces exist in the Symbolics system.  The concept of
exiting to the "system" is not meaningful on Symbolics machines; you're
always in the "system".  The concept of calling the GC at a particular
time is not meaningful either; the GC runs in parallel with normal
computation.  I'm sure there are other implementations with different
ideas about these concepts.  They just don't make very much sense to
standardize, because there is so much variation.