Why don't purely functional languages use reference counting?
- by Zifre
In purely functional languages, data is immutable. With reference counting, creating a reference cycle requires changing already created data. It seems like purely functional languages could use reference counting without worrying about the possibility of cycles. Am is right? If so, why don't they?
I understand that reference counting is slower than GC in many cases, but at least it reduces pause times. It would be nice to have the option to use reference counting in cases where pause times are bad.