Re: Confused by Lua garbage collection tear down order when there are references between objects

[Eric Wing <ewmailing@...>]

On 5/22/14, Roberto Ierusalimschy <roberto@inf.puc-rio.br> wrote:
>> I think I misunderstand "in the reverse order that they were marked
>> for finalization".
>
> "Marked for finalization" has a special and well-defined meaning
> there. It is explained two paragraphs before the one you misunderstood:
>
>   For an object (table or userdata) to be finalized when collected, you
>   must mark it for finalization.  You mark an object for finalization
>   when you set its metatable and the metatable has a field indexed by
>   the string __gc.
>
> So, "in the reverse order that they were marked for finalization" means
> in the reverse order that they got a metatable with a __gc field (which,
> more often than not, is just after they were created).
>
> -- Roberto
>
>

Thank you. I now understand.

Thanks,
Eric
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