I've recently been trying to convince a friend of mine that D has
at least the functionality of C++, and have been learning the
language over C++ for a few months. Memory management is pretty
important to him, and a subject I'm honestly curious about as
well. I was wondering: what's the preferred method for
deterministic memory management?
I don't know much about this topic relative to most (Java
background), but this is what I've found:
- Classes/Structs have constructors and destructors. I am
unconfident with my knowledge as to how this works with malloc
and free.
- core.memory can be used to call malloc and its buddies. It
allows determined management, but will still use the GC if
something isn't collected (presumably for leaks).
- Many features and types use the GC such as exceptions, the new
keyword, and all arrays except statics.
- Allocators in "std.experimental.allocators" still use the GC,
but give more control for class/struct objects.
- std.container.array can be used for deterministic arrays, but
has the issue of dangling pointers. There is probably a good
solution to this, but I don't know it.
- There seems to be no way to completely turn off the GC. That
is, never have the runtime allocate the memory used by the GC.
- Andreau had a discussion in 2009 about how this issue might be
handled, but there didn't seem to be an obvious consensus
(http://forum.dlang.org/thread/hafpjn$1cu8$1...@digitalmars.com?page=1)
This are the pieces I've gathered, but I don't really know what's
true or how to use this knowledge. Some ideas I've gleaned may
also be outdated. Does anyone know the "correct" way one would go
about a non-GC program, and if a program can be ran without ever
instantiating a GC? Has there been any progress on reducing the
std library's usage of the GC?
- Preferred method of creating ob... Anthony Monterrosa via Digitalmars-d-learn
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