Re: [Lua] Garbage collector

["Alex Davies" <alex.mania@...>]

Ok, in my mind there is a large difference between a "local" and a "value". 
A program can "create" a hundred local variables, and return them to C, and 
call other functions with them, without ever requiring the gc to free them. 
They just exist on the stack, and so get automatically "freed" when the 
stack shrinks or is reused.

Some "values" that you can store in a local variable require garbage 
collection though. From the moment you create them (tables userdata and 
closures) the garbage collector will attempt to find them, and if it can't 
it'll free them. It does this by inspecting locals, traversing tables, 
traversing function prototypes, etc.

So in answer to your question, the garbage collector "kicks in" from the 
moment the userdata is created. Some time after the last reference to the 
userdata is removed, it can be freed. This is why you need to keep strings 
and userdata on the stack until you're completely done working with them - 
so that lua doesn't free them. But you never know when this is going to 
occur. So if your userdata needs to release expensive resources you should 
do it manually when you are done using it, and only use the __gc method to 
catch cases like where an error thrown prevented you from doing it manually.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finalizer and 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_collection_(computer_science)#Tracing_garbage_collectors 
for more info.

- Alex

----- Original Message ----- 
From: liam mail
If a Lua (5.1) function creates a local variable(actually it is a userdata 
and metatable with __gc method set ) and returns it to Cpp pushing it onto 
the stack, when does the garbage collector kick in for this variable.?
Is it when the value is popped off the stack that the variable becomes "no 
longer active" or at a later time?