Re: Weak keyed tables with primitive keys

[Peter Cawley <lua@...>]

I believe that the following two excerpts from the the Lua 5.1
reference manual mean that strings, booleans, and numbers are always
strongly referenced, even in situations where other types would be
weak referenced (as in weak tables).

2.10.2 - "In other words, if the only references to an object are weak
references, then the garbage collector will collect this object."
2.2(.0) - "Tables, functions, threads, and (full) userdata values are objects"

On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 4:04 PM, Gary Bringhurst <garyb@strata.com> wrote:
> My google fu is failing me on this one.
>
> 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?
>
> Many thanks in advance,
> Gary Bringhurst
>
>