Ephemerons: The Strong Path to Finalization by Martin McClure
Channel: FAST - Fundación Argentina de Smalltalk
Date: 2017-11-21

Many applications need to finalize objects before they are garbage-collected. Smalltalk implementations have long provided weak containers as a way to address this need, but the newer ephemeron construct is becoming more widely available. Ephemerons are less well understood. What are ephemeron semantics, exactly? What are the differences (and similarities) between weak containers and ephemerons? What are the advantages and disadvantages? In this talk we'll take a look at these and other questions surrounding finalization, weakness, and ephemerons.