Re: Weak keyed tables with primitive keys

[Sam Roberts <vieuxtech@...>]

On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 8:04 AM, Gary Bringhurst <garyb@strata.com> wrote:
> Where can I find a definitive discussion of weak keyed tables and the
> behavior of primitive data types as those weak keys?  My tests say that
> unique string keys are never collected, and while I can see a justification
> for that I'd really like to know the relationship of primitive types such as
> strings to the garbage collector. Do we have to use tables or user data as
> keys in weak keyed tables in order for them to be collected?

When you do

  t["hi"] = "bye"

both the key and the value are being put into the table, why would
either get collected? If a key was collected, it wouldn't be in the
table.

Cheers,
Sam