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C++ has a GC ABI introduced in C++11 and the dialects C++ Builder, C++/CLI and C++/CX do have GC support at language level.

Library types like std::shared_ptr don't really count to say that a language has a GC, because their use, specially their correct use, is not enforced by the compiler.

And technically, also unique_ptr, which has a reference count of 1 or 0.

Indeed, according to these "ref counting is gc" folks, free(void *) is a garbage collector, so C has always been garbage collected since 1970.

No, because the language C doesn't provide any of the algorithms described here:

http://gchandbook.org

Although, there are conservative GCs for C that replace malloc () and make fre () a nop, they cannot release all memory properly due to C semantics.

I am pretty WildUtah was being sarcastic to be a more extreme version of my post. Or perhaps it was an attempt to expand the grey area.