[cl-irc-devel] Circular references, garbage collection & library implementation

[Erik Huelsmann]

> On Tue, Mar 22, 2005 at 01:58:44PM +0100, Erik Huelsmann wrote:
> > AFAICT, the current implementation will leak memory (ie won't be garbage
> > collected correctly) if users and channels are not removed (using
> > remove-user and remove-channel) before all references to a connection
> object
> > are lost/broken. In such cases, although nothing refers to the
> connection
> > object anymore, the channel may still contain user objects and the users
> > will still hold channel objects in their channel lists. In other words:
> they
> > won't be gc-able.
> 
> Without knowing the internals of cl-irc...
> 
> If an object isn't reachable, it is garbage collected. Circular
> unreachable references are not a problem.

Wow! That's far more sophisticated than I'm used from any
self-memory-managing language. Can I count on that in any lisp
implementation? (in other words, is that part of the standard?)

bye,

Erik.

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