Re: Userdata environment

[Bradley Smith <gmane@...>]

Shmuel Zeigerman wrote:
> Bradley Smith wrote:
> > Can someone explain to me why setting collectgarbage("setpause", 300) 
> > on  either Linux or Windows will cause the previously posted program 
> > to never collect garbage?
>
> If I understand it correctly, with pause>=200, the rate of garbage 
> collection can be less than that of garbage accumulation.

Quote from the Lua 5.1 Reference Manual:

The garbage-collector pause controls how long the collector waits before 
starting a new cycle. Larger values make the collector less aggressive. 
Values smaller than 1 mean the collector will not wait to start a new 
cycle. A value of 2 means that the collector waits for the total memory 
in use to double before starting a new cycle.

End quote.

What is considered a garbage collection cycle? Why does memory usage 
grow to more than triple if the pause is set to 3 ("setpause" of 300)?

It seems like a cycle is not the same as calling collectgarbage() 
because if I insert a collectgarbage call into the loop of the example 
program, the unbounded accumulation of memory does not occur.

Thanks,
  Bradley