Final answer:
Introducing a naive reference counting garbage collector can reduce certain types of defects, but without additional protections, issues like circular references, performance overhead, and dangling pointers can still occur.
Step-by-step explanation:
If we introduce a naive reference counting garbage collector into a programming language without other protections, we might still encounter several types of defects. To explore this, let's consider the common issues that can occur with reference counting:
- Circular References: Reference counting alone cannot handle circular references. If two or more objects reference each other, they will never have a reference count of zero, leading to memory leaks because the garbage collector will never deallocate them.
- Performance Overhead: Reference counting adds a performance overhead since the reference count needs to be updated every time an object is assigned to a variable or when a variable goes out of scope.
- Dangling Pointers: Improper deletion of objects can lead to dangling pointers. While reference counting helps by automatically deleting objects when their reference count drops to zero, if an object is manually deleted without updating the reference counts of all references, some pointers may still reference the freed memory and cause undefined behavior.
Therefore, without additional mechanisms like weak pointers for circular references or more sophisticated forms of garbage collection, issues like memory leaks and increased overhead can still occur with naive reference counting. However, it can mitigate dangling pointers if used correctly.