From: Christian Boos <cboos@...>
Date: 2002-08-13T23:10:43+09:00
Subject: RE: Data_Make_Struct Considered Dangerous?

Hi, 

my two cents on that issue:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: William Djaja Tjokroaminata [mailto:billtj@y.glue.umd.edu]
> Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2002 3:50 PM
> To: ruby-talk ML
> Subject: Data_Make_Struct Considered Dangerous?
> 
> ...
>
> Right now, the solution is simply to add this line:
> 
>     ....
>     ptr->data2 = Qnil;
>     ptr->data2 = Data_Make_Struct (cInner...);
>     ....
> 
> I don't know whether this is really all there is to it.  At least, for
> people who don't understand, the code may look funny, because it seems
> the Qnil assignment is just a waste.  

To me, this doesn't look funny, this looks just THE right thing to do:
secure already existing data structures reachable from the GC
before possibly triggering the GC. 

Maybe some more information about this issue in README.ext wouldn't hurt,
but I don't want a restricted,  "safer"  C API.
For instance, ALLOC is an useful wrapper on top of malloc,
because if needed, it can free memory by triggering a GC.

-- Christian