On Saturday 01 February 2003 05:58 am, Mauricio FernáÏdez wrote:
> Would these instant attributes live between method calls?
>
> class Bar
>   def foo
>     x = 1
>   end
>   def foo2
>     puts x
>   end
> end
>
> a = Bar.new
> a.foo
> a.foo2     # puts 1 ??

eeee.....well, they wouldn't be local then :) on the other hand is self became 
associated to the def, then other problems would arise. okay, so that was 
actually a dumb idea. :0o

> You possibly break GC, as blocks can access variables deeply down the
> stack, so you're in fact capturing a substantial part of the environment
> in each closure.
>
> def foo
>   x = "a" * 100000
>   proc do |i|
>      self[i].x    # Ouch, self.x can never be reclaimed for any self down
> 		  # the stack!
>   end
>   # normally x could be reclaimed here unless explicitly used by the
>   # closure
> end
>
> def foo2
>   x = "b" * 100000
>   foo
>   # normally x could be reclaimed here, but the closure might use it
> end
>
> foo.call(1)
> foo2.call(2)
> foo.call(100)     # now, what was x 100 stack-frames ago?
>
> I had better never use self[i].tmp inside one of these super-closures :)
>
> Maybe I got it wrong, but I have the feeling this is too powerful.
> I'll think more on this.
>
> Now, I sound like matz ;-)
>
> These super-closures sure are very seductive :)

like the the whole universe in a nutshell. amazing how complex things can be 
come.

thanks for responding. i knew these were amiss notions i just needed someone 
to point it out for me.

-- 
tom sawyer, aka transami
transami / transami.net