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Re: weak key hash versus display
From: |
Mikael Djurfeldt |
Subject: |
Re: weak key hash versus display |
Date: |
Thu, 30 Jan 2003 10:27:31 +0100 |
User-agent: |
Gnus/5.090008 (Oort Gnus v0.08) Emacs/21.2 (i386-pc-linux-gnu) |
Kevin Ryde <address@hidden> writes:
> In guile 1.6.1 or the cvs on a recent i386 debian, I noticed that
> doing a display of a weak key hash table can seemingly prevent a key
> from being garbage collected. For instance
>
> (define h (make-weak-key-hash-table 7))
>
> (define k "mykey")
> (hash-set! h (string-copy k) 12345)
>
> (display (hash-ref h k)) (newline)
> (display h) (newline)
> (gc)
> (display (hash-ref h k)) (newline)
>
> run with "guile -s foo.scm" produces
>
> 12345
> #wh(() () () () () ((mykey . 12345)) ())
> 12345
>
> whereas I might have expected the gc to have collected the entry just
> set, making the second hash-ref give #f rather than 12345. This is
> what happens if the (display h) is not present.
And if you keep (display h) but add
(display <some deep list-structure>),
hash-ref will give #f again.
The reason is that in order to avoid infinite loops due to circular
data-structures print functions need to keep track of printed
references. These are stored in a "print-state" attached to the
port. After displaying h, the print-state contains the reference to
the pair (mykey . 12345) which protects it from GC.
We should probably replace this vector with a weak vector, or (perhaps
more efficient) clear the references from the vector.
> I don't really know if this is a bug, or ignorance on my part, but it
> seemed more than a little strange.
Well, it's not really a bug. The Guile GC doesn't make any guarantees
that objects will get GC:d. For example, if the C stack happens to
contain an integer which happens to coincide with a reference on the
heap, that object won't get GC:d. A conservative GC only behaves
nicely in a statisticial sense.
Thanks for your observation.
Best regards,
Mikael Djurfeldt