[Newbies] Removing 'dead' instances

Marcin Tustin mm3 at zepler.net
Sun Sep 28 17:25:28 UTC 2008


On Sun, Sep 28, 2008 at 5:28 PM, Randal L. Schwartz
<merlyn at stonehenge.com>wrote:

> >>>>> "Andy" == Andy Burnett <andy.burnett at knowinnovation.com> writes:
>
> Andy> Could some kind soul please explain what I am doing wrong here?
> Andy> I have a model, called Fspace, which I have created several instances
> of,
> Andy> whilst I was testing it.
>
> Andy> Fspace allInstances size reports 9 instances.
>
> Andy> When I run
>
> Andy> Fspace allInstancesDo:
> Andy>    [:each |
> Andy>    each := nil.
> Andy> Transcript show: (each value); cr.
> Andy>    Smalltalk garbageCollect]
>
> Andy> The transcript shows that the values are set to nil. However, the
> instances
> Andy> don't go away.  So, what am I doing wrong?
>
> Setting "each" to "nil" there does nothing, since you aren't
> updating the object that was originally in "each".
>

This is a pretty common misconception. It seems to come up once a month. I
wonder why - mostly it's not people who are new to programming, who I would
expect to be unfamiliar with the distinction between an object or value and
the location it is stored in.


>
> You need to tell anyone still holding a reference to your objects
> to let go.  Some advice can be found at http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/2176
>
> --
> Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
> <merlyn at stonehenge.com> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
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> See http://methodsandmessages.vox.com/ for Smalltalk and Seaside
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