Garbage Collector

A garbage collector library, made as a project for my DSA - II course, implemented in C language.

Name: Sameer Kavthekar
MIS: 111903153
Division 2

Features

This garbage collector implements the mark and sweep algorithm along with the LISP2 algorithm for compaction. This library allows you to:

Dynamically allocate memory on the heap
Free allocated memory
Collect all garbage memory and free it automatically
Compact memory after freeing it
Compaction is enabled by default. To turn it off you can run the program by using -gC flag.

The main functions of my program are:

gc_malloc() This is the function that dynamically allocates memory. This function adds a header, containing metadata to every allocated object. This helps in tracking and collection of the object.
gc_free() This function primarily deals with freeing garbage in the heap. This function frees the object as well as the header.
gc_mark() A function that recursively marks all the objects that are reachable from roots (i.e. pointers on the stack, pointers in the registers, global variables).
gc_sweep() A function that frees every valid object that is not marked.
gc_compact() A function that compacts the memory i.e. it moves all the live objects to the start of the heap.

Make sure you have gcc installed You can check by typing the following in your terminal

$ gcc --version

Clone the repository

$ git clone  https://github.com/sameerkavthekar/garbage-collector.git

Copy gc.c, gc.h, hashmap.c and hashset.c from the src/ folder to your project directory and include gc.h in your main file

#include "gc.h"

Compile program by using

gcc yourfiles.c gc.c hashmap.c hashset.c -o yourfile