Garbage Collection in Ruby

Ruby's garbage collector, located in the gc.c file, is responsible for memory allocation, management, and garbage collection. It handles the entire lifecycle of an object. Ruby objects can be classified into two groups: immediates and heap allocated. Immediates are not managed by the garbage collector and have special representations. All pointers to Ruby objects are aligned at 40-byte boundaries, ensuring that the lowest three bits are always 0.

Ruby's garbage collector plays a crucial role in managing memory and ensuring efficient memory usage in Ruby programs. It automatically frees up memory occupied by objects that are no longer needed, reducing the risk of memory leaks. This feature is particularly important for developers who want to optimize their code and improve performance.

To better understand how Ruby's garbage collector works, let's take a look at an example:

def calculate_sum(n)
  sum = 0
  (1..n).each do |num|
    sum += num
  end
  sum
end

result = calculate_sum(100)
puts result

In this example, the garbage collector automatically frees up memory occupied by the sum variable after the calculate_sum method finishes executing. This ensures that memory is efficiently managed and available for other parts of the program.

Understanding how garbage collection works in Ruby is essential for developers who want to write efficient and performant code. By keeping up with the latest news and updates on Ruby's garbage collector, developers can optimize their code and improve the overall performance of their Ruby applications.