From: Joel VanderWerf <vjoel@...>
Date: 2007-10-02T05:22:22+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] dike-0.0.1 - a memory leak detector

Michal Suchanek wrote:
> On 28/09/2007, ara.t.howard <ara.t.howard@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sep 28, 2007, at 11:26 AM, Joel VanderWerf wrote:
>>
>>> That looks very useful. I'm not sure "leak" is the term I
>>> would use, since the objects are reachable. Unused reachable
>>> objects can be just as much of a problem as unreachable objects, of
>>> course.
>>>
>> agree.  we seem to be the minority though ;-(
>>
> 
> Are there any unreachable objects in Ruby? They should be collected
> and go away eventually. So what I am left with is a gigabyte of
> reachable objects ... time to optimize space I guess.

Sure there are. Ruby's GC is conservative. If it sees a number on the 
stack that looks like the address of an object, it assumes that the 
number is a pointer (though it could be something else) and it marks the 
object, even though the object might not be reachable. That's expected 
behavior.

There can also be bugs, of course.

-- 
        vjoel : Joel VanderWerf : path berkeley edu : 510 665 3407