I don't see the analogy.  Anyway, the point is that no terminating program can *rely* on its garbage being collected.

On Sun, Dec 3, 2023 at 4:58 AM Marc Nieper-Wißkirchen <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:
Am So., 3. Dez. 2023 um 06:13 Uhr schrieb John Cowan <xxxxxx@ccil.org>:
Marc Nieper-Wißkirchen scripsit:

SRFI 124 is wrong here; by Scheme's proper tail call guarantee, defined in "Will Clinger's Proper Tail Recursion and Space Efficiency," no longer used locations must be garbage collected (up to some "O(1)").

 Not necessarily.  If a program is known to terminate and doesn't require more locations (naively) than the machine makes available, then no garbage collection is required.

This is like saying that bubble sort is an O(1) algorithm for any program that terminates.