Feature #21957: Introduce `Enumerable#close` to free internal resources.

• Status: Open
• Assignee: ioquatix (Samuel Williams)
• Target version: -

[ioquatix (Samuel Williams)]

In some cases, Enumerable has substantial internal state (e.g. Fiber) related to enumeration. There is currently no way to clear up this state besides garbage collection, which means that we can accumulate considerable garbage before cleaning up, even if we know when the enumerable is no longer needed.

I'd like to introduce Enumerable#close which invalidates the enumerable, freeing internal resources. After which, most usage would result in Enumerable::ClosedError.

[Eregon (Benoit Daloze)]

+1

Leaking Fibers through an Enumerator is quite common and relying on the GC to clean that up is pretty brittle and it also adds significant complexity on the Ruby implementation (e.g. weakref to the Fiber object).

You're mentioning Enumerable here, but isn't it about Enumerator rather?

ioquatix (Samuel Williams) wrote:

After which, most usage would result in Enumerable::ClosedError.

Right, and that would work by simply having Enumerator#each for such Enumerators raise a Enumerator::ClosedError.