Hi,

At Mon, 19 Aug 2002 20:29:05 +0900,
Matthew Bloch wrote:
>   big_image.force_free
> 
> Which would simply free the memory used by that object and nilify the 
> reference, no questions asked.

It sounds very dangerous, and the method wouldn't be able to
change the reference itself.  I guess it requires new syntax.

Rather, if single object, big_image consumes huge memory, it
should have a method to free its resouces?

> Obviously users of this method would have the 
> burden of ensuring that no further references to this object exist, but the 
> garbage collector could be used to spot such 'dangling reference' errors, and 
> of course the runtime will fault it if such a reference is used.

It would need to scan whole space as GC to detect such
'dangling reference', and should be expensive equivalently to
your current method, nilfying and starting GC.

-- 
Nobu Nakada