Why is white / gray / black in GC?

Question

I implement mark-and-sweep garbage collection in a simple scripting API I am working on and read about various garbage collection implementations. An API such as Lua uses mark-and-sweep with white, gray and blacklists.

The problem is that I can’t find an explanation of why there are such lists and why they are placed in these specific colors.

In my current, trivial implementation, I just use “dead” or “living” states. In a sweep, dead objects are deleted. I use a native heap, so I am not making any changes to my GC.

I write it in C.

// Performs a full garbage collection
void GorCollect(GorContext *ctx)
{
    Value *v, *end;
    Collectable *c, *n;

    // mark stack references
    end = ctx->stack + ctx->stackTop + 1;
    v = ctx->stack;
    while(v != end)
    {
        if (gvisgc(v) && v->v.gc) // mark if a collectable obj
            Mark(v->v.gc);
        v = v++;
    }

    // mark global references
    if (ctx->global)
        Mark((Collectable *)ctx->global); // ctx->global is a collectable obj

    // perform sweep
    c = ctx->gchead; // full list of collectable objs
    ctx->gchead = 0;
    while(c) {
        n = c->next;    
        // destroy unmarked collectable
        if (!c->marked)
            FreeCollectable(ctx, c);

        // rebuild gc list (singly-linked)
        else
        {
            c->marked = 0;
            if (!ctx->gchead)
                c->next = 0;
            else
                c->next = ctx->gchead;
            ctx->gchead = c;
        }
        c = n;
    }
}

Answer 1

", ": . incremental. GC- "--" , , , .

GC , , : , . , . , , , .

, , , . , , , , , .

Answer 2

-, , , .

-, , . Mark, .

:

/* Initally, the white set contains all objects, the black and
   grey sets are empty. */
stack *st = m->mark_stack;
/* First all roots are added to the gray set. */
for (size_t i = 0; i < m->roots->used; i++) {
    ptr p = m->roots->array[i];
    if (p != 0) {
        /* Mark the root and move it to the gray set. */
        AT(p) |= 1;
        st_push(st, p);
    }
}
while (st->used) {
    /* Think of popping the object from the mark stack as moving
       it from the gray to the black set. */
    ptr p = st_pop(st);
    P_FOR_EACH_CHILD(p, {
        if (!GET_MARK(p_child)) {
            /* Then mark each non-black child and move it to the
               gray set. */
            AT(p_child) |= 1;
            st_push(st, p_child);
        }
    });
}
/* When control has reached this point, the gray set is empty and
   the whole heap has been divided into black (marked) and white
   (condemned) objects. */

. "stop-the-world" "sweep gc" .