Re: unset and circular references

--- On Fri, 6/27/08, Thijs Lensselink <dev@lenss.nl> wrote: > From: Thijs Lensselink <dev@lenss.nl> > Subject: Re: [PHP] unset and circular references > To: php-general@lists.php.net > Date: Friday, June 27, 2008, 5:21 PM > Quoting Abu Warez <abuwarez@yahoo.com>: > > > I think this happens because there is still a reference to the B object. > According to the manual : > > The destructor method will be called as soon as all > references to a > particular object are removed or when the object is > explicitly > destroyed or in any order in shutdown sequence. > > So as long as A has a reference to B the __destructor will > not be called. I think you mean: "As long as B has a ref to A (which, indeed, creates B), the destructor of A will not be called". I agree with that, but in this case the garbage collector should detect that the reference to object $a is from an object $m_b which is created (and maintained) again by the first object $a. In other words, if object $a is not needed then its member $m_b (which has a reference to $a) is not needed neither. So in this case, in my opinion, if one wants to destory object $a then the reference from $m_b to $a should not count. This issue is really frustrating because because in my code I have something like (where $a is of type class A): for ( $id ... ) { $a = daoMyClass->LoadById( $id ); .... modify $a ... /* persist modified $a */ daoMyClass->Update( $a ); unset( $a ); } unset, as stated, does not destroy $a and all the loaded $a's remain in memory until the script ends. Rising the memory limit is not a solution because the count of $a objects grows between script calls. Any ideas? Thx, Abu