From: Florian Frank <flori@...>
Date: 2007-08-03T09:27:11+09:00
Subject: Re: finalizer not getting called

Joshua Chia wrote:
> The finalizer is not getting called in this code -- it just prints
> 'exiting'.  What's wrong?  I'm running it on v1.8.6 on Windows Vista.
> 
> class A
>   def initialize
>      ObjectSpace.define_finalizer(self, proc{|id| puts "finalizing
> #{id}"})
>   end
> end
> a = A.new
> a = nil
> GC.start
> sleep(5)
> puts 'exiting'

If the answer is finalizer in Ruby, then it's very likely, that you're 
working on the wrong problem. They are quite difficult to get right 
(=not referencing the value to be finalized anywhere). You could use a 
class variable for example:

class A
   @@foo = proc{|id| puts "finalizing #{id}"}

   def initialize
     ObjectSpace.define_finalizer(self, @@foo)
   end
end

Another possibility is to use a binding, that doesn't

-- 
Florian Frank