From: matz@... (Yukihiro Matsumoto)
Date: 2001-07-05T12:54:38+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:17273] Re: extension and GC

Hi,

In message "[ruby-talk:17271] Re: extension and GC"
    on 01/07/05, Shan-leung Maverick WOO <maverick@cs.cmu.edu> writes:

|>   (2) depends on when do you want to deallocate your memory, but
|>       global finalizer rb_set_end_proc() may help.  See ext/curses.c
|
|I think this doesn't quite work in my case because the user can potentially
|create tons of such objects. To cast the question better, let me put up a
|hypothetical scenario: 
|
|- I am going to re-implement the dbm package by inheriting from Hash
|(instead of the current way which is to mimic a hash).

Ah, how do you going to hold dbm reference?  RHash structure has no
more room for it.  You have to hold dbm reference by either

  * wrap in C struct (as in dbm extension), then associate it via
    instance variable.

  * give up inheriting from Hash, probably having Hash for in-memory
    cache.

you can deallocate memory by C struct free function in both cases.
For the latter, don't forget to mark in-memory hash using mark
function.

This is the best I can say without reading your code.  I might be
missing something.

							matz.