Stack.Pop() doesn't actually free?

Monkey Forums/Monkey Bug Reports/Stack.Pop() doesn't actually free?

Skn3	(Posted 2013) [#1]

I was just examining the source of monkey's Stack and i noticed the Pop() method.

	Method Pop:T()
		length-=1
		Return data[length]
	End

It seems it doesn't actually remove the instance stored from the stack! Shouldn't the code be:

	Method Pop:T()
		length -= 1
		Local value:= data[length]
		data[length] = Null
		Return value
	End

??? otherwise how is the stack letting the garbage collect the popped value?

Skn3	(Posted 2013) [#2]

Same goes for Remove() it is shifting all values 1 but the last value still holds a pointer to whatever it was as it is not being nulled.

And also Clear()...

Crikey, am I being thick here and missing something or is stack currently a memory-leak/reference-hog?

What if I dumped say 100 objects on the stack and each object stored an image, some strings and general game data. Then I clear the stack a few frames later. Unless I repopulated the stack those 100 objects, images and vars would all stay in memory?

marksibly

(Posted 2013) [#3]

Yes...in general, I don't like to add '=Null' code everywhere to try and second guess GC, but in this case it's definitely a good idea!

Skn3	(Posted 2013) [#4]

Phew I'm not going Insane then haha!

secondgear

(Posted 2013) [#5]

This is one of the reasons I've been using Diddy's ArrayList instead.