AUTOMATIC REFERENCE COUNTING

In a method for enabling automatic reference counting, a segment of source code is replaced with an automatic reference counting implementation such that the source code executes an object destructor on demand irrespective of whether there are live references to an object, where a reference associates the object with a portion of memory, and where the object destructor marks the object as disposed without freeing the portion of memory associated with the object and without impacting validity of the reference to the object. The source code is executed with the automatic reference counting implementation, where the automatic reference counting collects a reference and removes the reference from being a live reference, and where marking of the object as disposed by the object destructor is executed on demand based on the source code irrespective of whether there are live references to the object and without impacting validity of the reference to the object.