What garbage collection algorithms do all 5 major browsers use?

Posted by Martin Wittemann on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Martin Wittemann
Published on 2010-04-19T12:14:34Z Indexed on 2010/04/19 15:13 UTC
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I am currently rethinking the object dispose handling of the qooxdoo JavaScript framework.
Have a look at the following diagram (A is currently in scope):

diagram

Let's say we want to delete B. Generally, we cut all reference between all objects. This means we cut connection 1 to 5 in the example. Is this really necessary?
As far as I have read hear 1, browsers use the mark-and-sweep algorithm. In that case, we just need to cut reference 1 (connection to the scope) and 5 (connection to the DOM) which could be much faster.
But can I be sure that all browsers use the mark-and-sweep algorithm or something similar?

1 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/864516/what-is-javascript-garbage-collection

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