Can cyclic reference cause memory leaks?

ar2rsawseen

Hello all,

I was looking for a solution, to handle multiple animations (multiple movie clips) for one object, based on different object states (collision, landing, etc). And ended up using cyclic reference, here is a very simple example:

--for example we have couple of movie clips with animations local crying = MovieClip.new{...} local smiling = MovieClip.new{...} local hit = MovieClip.new{...}   --storing references in one lua table local animations = {} animations.crying = crying animations.smiling = smiling animations.hit = hit   --and to get other animations from current animation --storing lua table reference in other animations crying.other = animations smiling.other = animations hit.other = animations

As you see animations references crying and crying references animations, which again references crying, etc.

Of course it is not the only solution, I could reference to global array with animations etc, but still out of curiosity,
is it safe to use something like that? Can it cause memory leaks?

I guess it depends on implementation of garbage collector, and so far testing app didn't notice any significant memory usage outburst.

atilim

Hi,

I think, your code is totally valid and harmless. Lua's garbage collector can easily handle cyclic references.

ar2rsawseen

Thank you