Channels are not tied to anything, so once your code stops referencing
them, they are garbage collected.
Go blocks are actually nothing more than pretty callbacks that are attached
to channels. So if a go is waiting for a put or a take from a channel, it
will be GC'd with the channel. I could go into the details here, but I'll
say it this way: if a channel could ever have a value again, it will not be
GC'd if there's no possible way for the channel to receive a value, then it
will be GC'd at some point.
For example:
(dotimes [x 100]
(let [c (chan)]
(dotimes [x 10]
(go (<! c)))))
Here, all these gos will be GC'd they are parked on the channel, but the
channel can never give them a value, so once the channel is GC'd all the
gos will as well.
You can (ab)use this by simply re-defining your channels when you want to
throw away new state. The new channel will replace the old, and that
channel will be GC'd along with all the GOs that are waiting on it.
Now, this is all a bit different if you use the (thread) macro. In that
case threads are not GC'd (since the OS is holding on to them) so you'll
need to shut those down on your own.
Hopefully this helps.
Timothy
On Mon, May 19, 2014 at 12:23 PM, Dylan Butman <dbut...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Great!
>
> I've used alts! before with control channels which is definitely useful as
> well.
>
> Timothy, can you elaborate a little? I'm still a little unclear when
> channels are garbage collected. It it an issue to leave channels open after
> you've stopped using them? I always feel a little strange constantly
> creating new channels to replace callbacks, blocking on their output, and
> then wondering whether or not I need to worry about closing them. If a
> channel falls out of scope is it garbage collected? How do go blocks affect
> scoping?
>
>
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