If your inputs are immutable and you don't want to copy them that works too since if you're careful. Copy on write means that it won't be duplicated by default

If your inputs are immutable and you don't want to copy them that works too since if you're careful. Copy on write means that it won't be duplicated by default. Of course reference counting changes means you will be writing to the inputs by default but if you're just branching for a computation you can temporarily turn off garbage collection while you diverge. Disabling garbage collection for a short lived forked process can even make sense on its own terms.