Subj : Re: Custom C++ objects with references and garbage collecting in
To   : Mads Bondo Dydensborg
From : Brendan Eich
Date : Tue Mar 29 2005 11:12 am

Mads Bondo Dydensborg wrote:

> Excuse my lack of knowledge -  these mark hooks are new to me. Are they 
> documented anywhere, besides the comments in some of the header files?


Not yet -- someone should patch 
http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla/source/js/docs/jsref.xml (wish it were in 
a wiki... soon, via DevMo....).  The jspubtd.h comments are best: 
http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla/source/js/src/jspubtd.h#320


> Hmm. That is kind of confusing. You are saying, that if object has 
> property object.name, object.name will be kept alive as long as object 
> is not garbage, but object can be cleaned before object.name?


Yes, of course.  Unless the object referenced by object.name, call it 
object2, has a property referencing object, then object can become 
garbage well before object2.


> I was under the impression that it was a pretty simple (although not 
> necc. simple to implement) concept. Can you recommend any texts that 
> would better enable me to understand the details of spidermonkey gc?


I'm getting to decades (plural) away from university at this point. 
Someone else, shout out a good textbook.

/be

.