> Note that the engine does not guarantee you any particular value of
> the refcount. Passing parameters around, accessing variables, etc. may
> change the refcount. One thing the engine guarantees you is that once
> no links to the variable exist it would be destroyed (which may not
> happen immediately after you do unset, for example, but probably would
> happen "soon"). So actually figuring out if the object is referenced
> by any other place could prove non-trivial, depending on the
> application structure.
I don't understand the problem really, because I am aware that even a
parameter counts as a reference (why not?)...it wouldn't matter in my
case because I am in total control of the last two references...so if
there are more, I keep it. Tracking the references manually is not
really an option because it's such a large project.
I don't understand the part about the engine not guaranteeing the
destruction immediately. Because as soon as the ref-count decreases to
zero it can be removed from memory...it's different in java and other
languages which don't use ref-count but more complex algorithms like
mark-and-sweep and such, they only are run once in a while and may not
be triggered manually...so, I'd understand it in that case.
