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| Posted by FeepingCreature in reply to realhet | PermalinkReply |
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FeepingCreature
Posted in reply to realhet
| On Monday, 30 November 2020 at 14:33:22 UTC, realhet wrote:
> Hi,
>
> class A{
> A parent;
> A[] items;
>
> void myDestroy(){
> items.each!(i => i.myDestroy);
> parent = null;
> // after this point I think the GC will release it automatically, and it will call ~this() too. Am I right?
> }
> }
>
> I have a hierarchy of class instances forward and backward linked to its items ant its parent.
>
> What is a proper way to destroy an instance of class A? Is calling instance.myDestroy sufficient?
>
> Am I right that this kind of uninitialization MUST not go into the ~this() destructor, because of the references the instance is holding, the system will never call the ~this()?
>
> Or is there a better way for this type of thing in Dlang?
>
>
> Thanks in advance!
The GC will release it anyways. The advantage of a GC is that it is not deterred by cyclic references, so as soon as no more references into A exist, it will disappear, no matter the parent pointer.
At least, that's the theory - in practice, since we don't have precise stack GC, any spurious or leftover pointer to an A can keep the whole tree alive, so the myDestroy cleanup method is still valid and recommended. Though you may want to do `items = null;` too.
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