GarbageCollector

A minimal mark-and-sweep garbage collector implemented in C.
This project demonstrates the basic concepts of garbage collection and memory management using a simple virtual machine (VM) with integers and pairs.

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Overview

Garbage collection is a technique to automatically manage memory in programming languages. This project implements a simple mark-and-sweep garbage collector:

1. Mark phase: Traverse all reachable objects and mark them.
2. Sweep phase: Free all unmarked (unreachable) objects.

The VM has a stack to store active variables and a linked list of all allocated objects to track memory usage.

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Features

• Supports two object types: int and pair (linked structures).
• Handles cyclic references without crashing.
• Dynamic threshold to trigger garbage collection.
• Minimal implementation suitable for learning and experimentation.

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Project Structure

GarbageCollector/
├── main.c       # Full GC implementation + demo tests
├── Makefile     # Build & run helper
├── README.md    # Project description (this file)
├── LICENSE      # MIT license
└── .gitignore   # Ignore compiled files and VS Code configs

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Build & Run

Using GCC directly

gcc main.c -o gc
./gc

Using Makefile

make        # Build
make run    # Build and run
make clean  # Remove executable

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Demo Tests

The main.c file includes 4 demo tests:

Test	Description
Test 1	Objects on stack are preserved
Test 2	Unreached objects are collected
Test 3	Nested objects are preserved
Test 4	Handles cycles without crashing

Sample output:

Test 1: Objects on stack are preserved.
Collected 0 objects, 2 remaining.
Test 2: Unreached objects are collected.
Collected 2 objects, 0 remaining.
Test 3: Reach nested objects.
Collected 0 objects, 3 remaining.
Test 4: Handle cycles.
Collected 0 objects, 4 remaining.

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License

This project is licensed under the MIT License – see the LICENSE file for details.

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Learn More

• Mark-and-sweep GC concept: Wikipedia
• Memory management in C: C Programming

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### ✅ How to Add This to Your Repo

1. Save this content in your repo folder as `README.md`  
2. Stage, commit, and push:

```bash
cd /Users/ayushkrishna/Desktop/GarbageCollector
git add README.md
git commit -m "Add polished README with overview and usage"
git push

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