It's a precise GC of course (conservative collection would be madness
considering how much memory Haskell programs chew through.) That still
doesn't ensure your finalizer will run during the next GC even if all the
references are gone by then.
Sent from my iPhone^H^H^H^H^HPortable Turing machine
On Feb 6, 2012, at 10:09 PM, Clark Gaebel
On 07/02/2012, at 2:50 PM, Clark Gaebel wrote:
I would be running the GC manually at key points to make sure it gets cleaned up. Mainly, before any scene changes when basically everything gets thrown out anyways.
From the docs:
newForeignPtr :: FinalizerPtr a -> Ptr a -> IO (ForeignPtr a)Source Turns a plain memory reference into a foreign pointer, and associates a finalizer with the reference. The finalizer will be executed after the last reference to the foreign object is dropped. There is no guarantee of promptness, however the finalizer will be executed before the program exits.
"No guarantee of promptness". Even if the GC knows your pointer is unreachable, it might choose not to call the finaliser. I think people have been bitten by this before.
Ben.
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