Re: Embedded Perl - Memory leak

[Molt]

You may want to look into making 'value' mortal. It's been a while since I touched internals but what I think is happening is that the newSVpvn() call is producing as SV with a refcount of one, when it's pushed onto the array this is going up to two, and hence going back down to one when the array is destroyed.. and not being destroyed.

I seem to recall this being discussed in "Extending and Embedding Perl", but I don't have my copy at work so can't check.

[rajiyer]

Actually, I have tried making 'value' a mortal. If I do that, I will have to change:

sv_free(av_delete(array, len, FALSE));

to

av_delete(array, len, FALSE);

otherwise, I get the error 'Attempt to free unreferenced scalar' on FREETMPS call. What this implies is that av_push does not increment the reference count of 'value'. Correct me if I am wrong.

[IlyaM]

It was long time when I wrote Perl modules in C last time but IIRC av_push does increment the reference count. On the other hand I'm not sure why you need sv_free - av_delete should decrease reference counter of deleted SV itself. Try to add sv_dump() calls to check it yourself.

[Elian]

You may want to look into making 'value' mortal.

No. Never make things you put into an aggregate (or things you've fetched out of an aggregate) mortal. It messes up the refcounts, will result in things being prematurely destroyed, and in some cases may end up with unusual garbage inside the aggregates.

Putting things into aggregates and taking them back out doesn't affect their refcounts.