McCarthy: automatic reclamation of abandoned list storage

What changed

Programs could reclaim abandoned list structures without users manually freeing each cell.

Scientific scope

1960 Lisp paper's automatic reclamation mechanism; later generational, copying and concurrent collectors excluded.

Evidence

The linked sources identify this contribution and its scope. WRS has not independently reconstructed the scientific claims. The record is the mechanism in McCarthy’s 1960 paper. It does not assign every garbage-collection algorithm, Lisp implementation or list-processing contribution to that single work.

Contributors

• John McCarthy · SCIENCE: Named source author of the scoped work; individual effort shares are not measured.

• McCarthy, Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions, author archive
• McCarthy, Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions and Their Computation by Machine, Part I

Provisional WRS assessment, edition 2026-10-16.1. Independent expert calibration is pending. This grade does not certify correctness or assign ownership.

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