> Well, a large commercial software vendor uses the terms "retain" and
> "release". :-)

> I actually would like to rename a lot of things that ref-count to the
> "retain" and "release" scheme.  "addref" and "delref" seem so clumsy
> as pseudo-words.

I'm not that fond of retain/release, because the words don't feel like
inverses of one another to me; if I wanted an antonym to "retain" I'd
probably pick "discard".  hold/release seems better to me, or
hold/drop.  I've also written code using ref/deref.

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