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digitalmars.D - Forcing deletion of something?

reply "Jarrett Billingsley" <kb3ctd2 yahoo.com> writes:
Is it possible to cause an object to be deleted immediately rather than at 
the next GC sweep?  I ask because I am writing a DirectX engine.  Some 
things reside not in system RAM, but in video RAM, which is, AFAIK not 
managed by the GC.  It is bad to leave stuff laying around in video RAM as 
it's rather limited.  I'd rather not leave it up to the GC as to when those 
resources are deleted.

Is there any way to force immediate deletion of an object without manually 
running the GC?
Feb 28 2005
parent reply "Ben Hinkle" <ben.hinkle gmail.com> writes:
"Jarrett Billingsley" <kb3ctd2 yahoo.com> wrote in message 
news:d00dch$14fb$1 digitaldaemon.com...

 Is it possible to cause an object to be deleted immediately rather than at 
 the next GC sweep?  I ask because I am writing a DirectX engine.  Some 
 things reside not in system RAM, but in video RAM, which is, AFAIK not 
 managed by the GC.  It is bad to leave stuff laying around in video RAM as 
 it's rather limited.  I'd rather not leave it up to the GC as to when 
 those resources are deleted.

 Is there any way to force immediate deletion of an object without manually 
 running the GC?


Calling delete should run the destructor, if that is what you mean. It might 
not immediately put the memory on the GC free list, but I can't remember 
exactly. You are right that the GC won't touch video RAM. It gets its memory 
from system RAM. So if you want to use the GC to help manage VRAM you should 
make a lightweight object that holds video RAM:
class VRAM {
   void* ptr; // however one points to vram
   this(size_t s) { ... allocate ptr to vram ... }
   ~this() { ... destroy ptr to vram... }
}
int main() {
  VRAM obj = new VRAM(1000*float.sizeof);
  ... do stuff with obj.ptr ...
  delete obj; // release vram. otherwise will eventually be GC'ed
  return 0;
}

Or you can poke around with class allocators and deallocators.
Feb 28 2005
parent "Jarrett Billingsley" <kb3ctd2 yahoo.com> writes:
 Calling delete should run the destructor, if that is what you mean.


Ah!  That's all I need then, as I can easily free the reference to the stuff 
in the video RAM in the object's destructor.  Just did some tests and that 
seems to be the case.

Thanks :)
Feb 28 2005