Is ownership-based memory management basically reference counting?

[ghost]

Please correct me if I'm wrong. Thank you.

[IsaacShelton]

Yes, except there is no reference count, since there is only a single owner (unlike reference counting)

It's like reference counting, except a single value controls the entire lifetime

For example

import basics

func main {
    a String = "This is a string".clone()
    b String = a // `b` is a reference to the contents of `a`
    c String = a.commit() // `c` takes ownership of the string data, `a` and `b` are now references to `c`'s data
    // `c` goes out of scope, and deallocates the string
}