delete_at – does it actually remove from RAM

Ruby Questions
1

I’ve been looking for ways to manually delete objects in ruby, and I’ve come across the idea of doing a = [] a[0] = Object.new a.delete_at(0)
This deletes it from the array and allows no way of gettin to it, but I was wondering if it really deletes the object from memory?

If not, could I use the garbage collector to do so?

2

delete_at removes the reference from the array but the object will not be removed from memory until the garbage collector removes it. You can start a garbage collection by calling GC#start. I’m not sure what guarantees there are about any particular object being freed on any particular collection.

3

It is unfortunately not possible to mark an object as being ready for garbage collection in MRI.

However, as @kofno says, you can start the garbage collector with GC.start. You can also get stats about the garbage collector with GC.stats.

4

Okay, thanks for the information — I think I know how I could make a little game that works how I’d like. :slight_smile: