Is there a need for Garbage Collection in a Stack Based Language?

Question

This may be a stupid question but I cannot figure out the need for Garbage Collection in a Stack based language. In a language like Forth or RPL (on HP Calculators) is there a need for Garbage Collection?

I would think since output is popped off the stack that there would be no need. Am I missing anything?

Answer 1

GC is normally applied to memory allocated on the heap. I'm not familiar with Forth or RPL, but if there is no heap, and everything is stored on a global stack instead, then there's nothing for GC to do.

Answer 2

Yes, you're right. But the stack basedness is just a part of the whole story. For example Java bytecode interpreter is stack based as well (the compiled code works -- for efficiency reasons -- differently). This says us, that any language can be transformed into a stack language.

What matters are the objects outside of the stack, those who can outlive the current method execution. As long as the language has nothing like malloc or new, there are no such objects and you need no delete nor GC.

A language lacking dynamic memory allocation is quite limited in its usefulness.