Re^4: weak-reference set internally

true, but in other cases i may well have created the Foo object outside of the creation of a Bar, and ALSO store it internally within Bar (for ease of use within Bar's methods), hence the reason for the weak-ref.

This is the issue...

Comment on Re^4: weak-reference set internally

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Re^5: weak-reference set internally by Corion (Patriarch) on Sep 30, 2010 at 10:02 UTC
You either need the parent to still be around. Then you need a strong reference. Or it is OK if the parent goes away. Then you need a weak reference. If you have a strongly referenced relation between parent and child, you will need to call a special method (like, `->free()`) to release the references you hold explicitly. As Perls memory management is based on reference counting, there is no other, implicit way to find out that a set of memory objects is not referenced from anywhere on the outside. If you want a bit more sanity in managing such object forests, you can keep a reference to a "master" object for each tree, whose main purpose is to call `->free()` on the topmost parent object of that tree.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^5: weak-reference set internally by Anonymous Monk on Sep 30, 2010 at 10:04 UTC
I can't quite envision a scenario where you need this, but either you want Foo available or you don't. Pick one.	[reply]