Lua garbage collection of Tables, nested Tables
lua, lua-table, memory-management
Solution
In most GC an object will be collected when there are no references to it. Setting the top of your reference chain to nil removes a reference to the children. If that was the only reference then the children will be collected.
Problem
[I've read the Lua manual, but it did not provide solid answers.] Let's say I have a Lua Table, acting as an indexed array: ``` local myArray = {}; myArray[1] = "Foo"; myArray[2] = "Bar"; ``` How do I best dispose of this Table? Do I just set myArray to nil? Or do I have to iterate through array and set each indexed element to nil? Similarly, let's say I have I have a Lua Table, acting as a dictionary: ``` local myDictionary = {}; myDictionary["key1"] = "Foo"; myDictionary["key2"] = "Bar"; ``` Can I just set 'myDictionary' to nil, or do I have to iterate through? Lastly, what do I do, memory-management wise, where I have nested Tables? e.g. ``` local myNestedCollection = {}; myNestedCollection[1] = {1, 2, 3}; myNestedCollection[2] = {4, 5, 6}; ``` Do I need to iterate through each of these sub-tables, setting them to nil? Thanks for any help.