摘要 |
Live pointer information for a stream of bytecodes is precomputed for each bytecode. The precomputed full live pointer information is stored only for bytecodes at predetermined intervals in the stream. Between the bytecodes for which full live pointer information is stored, changes in the live pointer information produced by each bytecode are encoded using a suitable compressive coding and stored. Later, when a program which needs the live pointer information, such as garbage collection, is initiated, the full live pointer information for the nearest bytecode preceding the desired bytecode boundary is retrieved along with the intervening coded changes. The changes are decoded and applied to the retrieved live pointer information to generate the live pointer information at the desired bytecode boundary. In one embodiment of the invention, the live pointer changes are delta encoded so that each code contains information relating to the live pointer changes produced by a bytecode from the live pointer information as modified by the previous delta code. In another embodiment of the invention, the delta coded changes are encoded with a Huffman encoding scheme.
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