From: Brian Candler <b.candler@...>
Date: 2011-04-02T07:00:20+09:00
Subject: Re: Method Call from inside a file.

Tridib Bandopadhyay wrote in post #990442:
>> I don't know what you mean by "acting like a library function".
>
> I mean to say that I am trying to write a function which will allow the
> users to free the allocated memory by themselves rather than doing it by
> Garbage Collection. So I need a syntax like that of C
>
> free(variable);

I believe you're writing C code for use by ruby. Ruby doesn't provide 
users with any free() method; users rely on garbage collection. So if 
you want to extend ruby in C, you need to make your code work with 
ruby's garbage collection.

A ruby user can *prevent* something from being garbage collected, if 
they want, just by holding a reference to it (e.g. in a global 
variable).

If you read 
http://www.ruby-doc.org/docs/ProgrammingRuby/html/ext_ruby.html then 
you'll find whole sections on memory allocation and garbage collection. 
Look at Data_Make_Struct and Data_Wrap_Struct in particular. If you 
won't read the documentation, then I'm afraid you're on your own.

Of course, if you're writing C to be called from C (rather than from 
ruby) then you can have people call your own allocate and free routines. 
But this is not a forum about writing C programs.

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