[Pika-dev] Garbage collection/finalizers

[Andreas Rottmann]

Hi!

I just wondered about how strings should be garbage collected;
currently, only the vtable object is reclaimed, but the udstr object
stays around forever. Clearly, we need a finalizer for string
objects. According to [0], finalizers should be implemented with weak
references:

[0] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/pika-dev/2004-05/msg00024.html

,----
| 3) The finalization problem
| 
|   Some types require finalization.   After the object dies, some other
|   asynchronous computation has to be scheduled.
| 
|   This can be regarded as a generalization of the weak-reference
|   problem:  an object with a finalizer is like an object that has a
|   "special" weak reference -- one that when the referant dies, an
|   async computation is scheduled.
`----

Am I right that the final udstr_unref() call currently missing is an
instance of the "finalizer problem" and should thus be solved by
implementing weak references? I might give implementing the proposal
outlined in [1] a shot...

[1] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/pika-dev/2004-05/msg00019.html

Cheers, Rotty
-- 
Andreas Rottmann         | address@hidden      | address@hidden | address@hidden
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