devel/ruby-ref 1.0.5 OpenBSD

ruby-ref provides object references for Ruby as well as some common utilities for working with references. Object references are used to point to other objects and come in three distinct flavors that interact differently with the garbage collector.

* Ref::StrongReference - This is a plain old pointer to another object.

* Ref::WeakReference - This is a pointer to another object, but it is not seen by the garbage collector and the memory used by the object can be reclaimed at any time.

* Ref::SoftReference - This is similar to a weak reference, but the garbage collector is not as eager to reclaim the referenced object.

All of these classes extend from a common Ref::Reference class and have a common interface.

Weak and soft references are useful when you have instantiated objects that you may want to use again but can recreate if necessary. Since the garbage collector determines when to reclaim the memory used by the objects, you don't need to worry about bloating the Ruby heap.