David Kastrup writes: > Christopher Allan Webber <cweb...@dustycloud.org> writes: > >> I thought they weren't but now I'm not really sure where I got that >> idea from. Does anyone know for sure? > > They are garbage-collected. This is not overly relevant outside of > C/C++ code since as long as any code references a symbol, it will stay > around. It's only when you look at things like its address independent > of the symbol that you'd notice. > > scheme@(guile-user)> (object-address 'blablaaaaaa) > $4 = 94515697299616 > scheme@(guile-user)> (gc) > scheme@(guile-user)> (object-address 'blablaaaaaa) > $5 = 94515696660320 > scheme@(guile-user)> > > Similar for hashq: without the symbol being stored somewhere, it will > likely deliver different values each time round. > > If you put this into code rather than retyping it on the command line, > the address will be the same each time. You'd need to use something > like > (string->symbol "blablaaaaaa") > in order to get different addresses: a literal symbol in the code would > be protected.
Thanks for the reply! That's helpful. Dave Thompson also did a little demo for me, and I'm totally convinced that symbols are GC'ed now. :)
