From: Roger Pack <rogerpack2005@...>
Date: 2008-08-01T14:18:41+09:00
Subject: Re: gc doesn't collect?

Just to clear up confusion:
I believe that

GC.start 'forces' a garbage collection, and that
do...end and
{...} scopes do indeed have their own scope and local variables, as 
methods do.

interestingly,

def go
  1.times { a = 'a'*1000};
end
go
30.times { GC.start };
print ObjectSpace.each_object{|o| print o}

yields the same errant results.  I might look into it sometime.  Very 
weird.

Now for some questions:

currently the GC marks live objects then sweeps to find any free 
objects--except it doesn't actually free any objects that are free but 
need finalization.  It seems to only do finalizations when a user 
explicitly calls GC.start, or when the program terminates.  Is there a 
reason for this 'deferred_final_list' activity?

Also is it true that objects marked FL_SINGLETON should never be freed, 
even if they are no longer referenced by any live code?  Or is 
FL_SINGLETON just used as an internal GC marker to mean 'the heap this 
object comes from is entirely free--don't bother adding it to the 
freelist since it is on the chopping block to be free'ed' and nothing 
else?

Thanks!
-R
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