A question about GC

ruby-talk
1

Sam,

When I'm done with it, I want to close it and unload
it from memory. The right procedure is

xl.quit
xl = nil
GC.start

I want to make a function for the 3 steps.

def quit_excel(xl)
  xl.quit
  xl = nil
  GC.start
end

When I call it, I do

quit_excel(xl) #don't work as expected

As you know, the argument is call-by-value and even
if I set nil to xl, the outer reference is still
referencing Excel. So GC won't collect it.

    One simple solution would be to keep the reference to x1 in an
array, then when you are done with it, simply delete the reference from
the array. You will still have a reference to the array, but not to the
object itself.

    Of course, a better solution would be to encapsulate the reference
inside an object and have the object take care of creating and deleting
the reference.

    I hope this helps.

    - Warren Brown