Are timers deleted after calling Timer.stopAll()?

Magnusviri

I have an app that I need to stop timers for a transition and so I'm using Timer.stopAll(). But I'm wondering if a timer hasn't been called, will it be garbage collected eventually? I'm not keeping any references to the timers, just the addEventListener, like this.

function afterDelayPerformFunction(delay, functionToPerform) local timer = Timer.new(delay, 1) timer:addEventListener(Event.TIMER, functionToPerform) timer:start() end   function transition() Timer.stopAll() end

hgvyas123

i think so no (why ?)

here's the my test result

local myTimer = Timer.new(10,10000)   myTimer:start()   function onEnterFrame() i=i+1 print(i,myTimer) if i==10 then Timer.stopAll() --myTimer= nil end end stage:addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME,onEnterFrame,stage)

atilim

Yes they're collected. (Running timers are never collected and not running timers are eligible to GC.)

local myTimer = Timer.new(1000) myTimer:start()   myTimer.proxy = newproxy(true) getmetatable(myTimer.proxy).__gc = function() print("collected!") end   local i = 0 myTimer:addEventListener(Event.TIMER, function() print("tick.") i = i + 1 if i == 3 then Timer.stopAll() end end)   stage:addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, function() collectgarbage() end)

There are only two ways to understand if an object is collected or not:
1. Using the unofficial function newproxy
2. Using weak tables

@hgvyas123, in your example, you're accessing myTimer as an upvalue. Therefore, it's still accessible and not eligible to GC.

hgvyas123

@hgvyas123, in your example, you're accessing myTimer as an upvalue. Therefore, it's still accessible and not eligible to GC.

got that i need some reading on this topics didnt know about upvalue and newproxy function

Magnusviri

Thanks!

I'm guessing that a paused timer is not eligible for GC (this isn't something I'm concerned with now but I just wanted to make the thread complete).

atilim

I'm guessing that a paused timer is not eligible for GC

exactly.

OZApps

got that i need some reading on this topics didnt know about upvalue and newproxy function

The upvalues just mean values that are declared outside of the function/block, so if you have something like

local var = "Test"

and now if you access this value in a function later, var is called an upvalue as it is not a local variable to that function block.

The magic in @Atilim's code is about overriding the __gc function via setmetatable, this is when the GarbageCollector is invoked.

and definitely I am seeing the newProxy function for the first time.

hgvyas123

@OZApps

thnx for the great explanation