On Fri, January 27, 2017 11:37 am, Dmitry Boyarintsev wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 12:52 PM, Jon Foster
> <jon-li...@jfpossibilities.com>
> wrote:
>
>
>> Correct me if I'm wrong: It would seem like that your free
>> implementation
>>> doesn't actually do anything, other than fulfilling the obligation of
>>> having a "free". If I do this:
>>>
>>
>> var o: TObject;
>> begin o:=TObject.create;
>> { do something ... }
>> o.free; end.
>>
>> Wouldn't "o" still contain a reference after "free" is called? In
>> non-JVM FPC "self" is just another variable, who's origin is somewhat
>> hidden by the compiler. The call to "o.free" would do something like
>> "TObject.free(o)"
>> where "o" is passed by *value* into the procedure variable "self".
>> "Self"
>> comes and goes with the scope of the "TObject.free" procedure. Which is
>> why if I'm concerned about detecting whether or not "o" still contains a
>> correct object reference I would need to do something like this:
>> "o.free;
>> o:=nil;" so I can test for "nil" later. Although I think FPC added a
>> procedure to do that some time back. Yup, I see it
>> "SysUtils.FreeAndNil".
>>
>>
>> I'm not sure of the specific semantics of the JVM calls but from what I
>> read in the various FPC JVM related pages on the wiki it would seem to
>> use similar semantics.
>
>
> Object Pascal semantic of calling .Free suggests that "o" would no longer
> be a valid object. If a dummy Free method is available for JVM, then such
> semantic is violated.
>
> However, if JVM free method would at least reset "o" reference to nil,
> then the semantic of "o" being an invalid object remains.
>
> It also suggests to the garbage collector that the memory could be
> recycled earlier, that the variable leaves the scope.
>
> thanks, Dmitry
Another interesting idea, from all this discussion, is whether a mixed
Garbage Collected/Manually Collected language could exist.
Imagine a garbage collected programming language, that at any point in
time, you could take control of with your bare hands and free anything.
This, likely, would be:
1) a bad idea
2) hard to implement
3) or an interesting thesis project for some ivory tower...
I'm not sure if this sort of what Delphi's iOS fake free/release system
allows...
I dream of a language that is garbage collected for every day use (most
projects) but when I want to have real time control (nuclear power plant
or rocket ship that requires code run in real time), this dream language
could be handy.
It could also be a confusing nightmare (as Delphi iOS garbage
collection/fake release system is getting a bit scary)
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