Comments on: On reference counting

By: Bob

Bob — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 16:06:11 +0000

I do not understand, Rob. Picture this (X would be some object within the application and the circle is made of A, B and C):
X->A->B->C->A
The reference counts thus are (n for arbitray):
(n)->(2)->(1)->(1)->(2)
When the reference from X to A is released, A remains with count of 1, hence no reason to run dispose and the circle stays intact.

By: Rob Taylor

Rob Taylor — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 22:10:04 +0000

Hey Phillip,

You’re slightly wrong on the cyclic reference counting issue. Gobjects cope pretty well with cyclic reference without using weak references. The important thing is to release all your object’s references in the dispose method. The objects will only be finalized when the whole cycle has been dereferenced (at at least, that’s the theory..)

Good stuff apart from that though :)

Rob

By: Jonh Wendell

Jonh Wendell — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 20:37:32 +0000

Hi, great article. Thanks for writing this.

The only section a bit confused to me is Caveats (weak references).