Manual Memory Management ​

Jule has functionalities that enable manual memory management. But this has some points that create unsafety.

With std/mem ​

The Heap struct included in the standard library allows you to manually allocate and release space. It is relatively safer than raw pointers.

For example:

use "std/mem"

fn main() {
    let mut i = mem::Heap[int].New()
    i.Set(20)
    println(i.Get())
    i.Free()
}

With Integrated Jule ​

The standard library part of Integrated Jule provides various functions for memory management methods provided by C/C++. This method is based entirely on raw pointers and is quite unsafe.

use integ "std/jule/integrated"

fn main() {
    unsafe {
        let mut i = integrated::New[int]()
        *i = 20
        println(*i)
        integrated::Delete[int](i)
        i = nil
    }
}

Disable Rereference Counting ​

You can use manual memory management method with disable reference counting. Advantage of that, Jule has allocation functions for smart pointers, so reference counted types, and when you disable reference counting, you have smart pointers that must be freed manually. So you can use primitive smart pointers with manual memory management. This approach migh be more flexible and readable. Also easy to return reference counting.

The Free function of std/mem library, provides deallocation functionality types which is performs reference counting internally. The Free function just assigns to nil and decrases rereference counting data when reference counting enabled. In other words, assigns to nil and deallocates allocation.

Risk of that, you should trace dependencies of allocations befıre deallocating. Because dependencies cannot traced by automatically because of reference counting disabled. So you will have invalid memory addresses when you deallocates in-use allocations.

For example:

fn main() {
    {
        let mut x = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
        println(x)
    } // x leaked
}

In this example above, variable x is leaked because of disabled reference counting. Variable x is a slice, and slice performs internal reference counting. Therefore, you must free variable x manually.

use "std/mem"

fn main() {
    {
        let mut x = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
        println(x)
        mem::Free(x)
    }
}

In this updated example above, calls Free function from std/mem library for variable x. So, allocation freed, there is no leak.