note khkramer <p> But the interpreter isn't cleaning up the object, it's setting the <i>reference</i> to undef. The object is still around (and accessible by other means).</p> <p> I like your recreational-swim analogy, but I'm still trying to figure out how the behavior I'm seeing is consistent with the specified operation of the garbage collector. The Camel book says that objects are always destroyed in a separate pass before ordinary references (3rd ed. page 331), and maybe that's a clue, but there's still a problem: </p> <p> When the interpreter is ready to exit, presumably "everything" goes out of scope. At that point, there are no references left to my $::index object. So it should be garbage collected pretty early. But it's not and, worse, an object reference it's holding is set to undef at some apparently arbritrary moment. I've been very careful to avoid circular references, so there *is* a sensible destruction order for these objects. But if references disappear without provocation, then that order can't be maintained. </p> 166791 166795