Re: garbace collection of point-markers

[Barry Margolin]

In article <87znphzl2d.fsf@thalassa.informatimago.com>,
Pascal Bourguignon  <pjb@informatimago.com> wrote:
>
>kamphausen@creativepharma.com (Stefan Kamphausen) writes:
>
>> Dear ElispWizards,
>> 
>> when I call (point-marker) and don't store the return value in a
>> variable will that marker be removed at the next garbage collection?
>
>It seems so:
> 
>(show (let ((curpt (point)))
>        (set-marker (make-marker) curpt)
>        (cons (buffer-has-markers-at curpt)
>              (progn (garbage-collect)
>                     (buffer-has-markers-at curpt)))))
>==> (t . t)

Your test seems to show that the markers are *not* cleaned up by the GC.

Buffers keep track of the markers that point to them (so that they can be
updated when the buffer is modified), and that keeps them from becoming
garbage until the buffer is killed.  This would be an ideal application for
"weak" references if Emacs Lisp had them, but AFAIK it doesn't.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar@genuity.net
Genuity, Woburn, MA
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