Re: When are unused overlays garbage collected?

[tomas]

On Wed, May 26, 2021 at 06:53:42AM +0200, Marcin Borkowski wrote:
> 
> On 2021-05-24, at 14:27, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
> 
> >> From: Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl>
> >> Date: Mon, 24 May 2021 07:00:54 +0200
> >> 
> >> --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
> >> The overlay continues to exist as a Lisp object, and its property list
> >> is unchanged, but it ceases to be attached to the buffer it belonged to,
> >> and ceases to have any effect on display.
> >> 
> >> A deleted overlay is not permanently disconnected.  You can give it
> >> a position in a buffer again by calling ‘move-overlay’.

[...]

> But what would happen if I (delete-overlay my-overlay), then it gets
> garbage collected, and then I (move-overlay my-overlay ...)?
                                              ^^^^^^^^^^

You are still holding a reference to it. It would be an extremely
impolite action on part of the garbage collector to even look at
your overlay. I'm sure it would bring about a severe reprimand :)

Cheers
 - t

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