[Rcpp-devel] [Rd] R_PreserveObject, R_ReleaseObject : reference counting needed ?

Hello,

We are currently making lots of changes to Rcpp (see the open Rcpp mailing list if interested [1] in the details).

We are now using [2] R_PreserveObject and R_ReleaseObject to manage garbage collection instead of the PROTECT/UNPROTECT dance. This seems to work well, but I was wondering if there was documentation about it.

I don't think so - the only documentation is the comment in the source.

In particular, if we preserve the same SEXP twice (or more), should we implement some sort of reference counting ?

Preserve/Release are for managing objects that are supposed to survive past the call and are not tied to any other R object. PROTECT/UNPROTECT are for temporary preservation within a call.

Although you're right that Preserve/Release is effectively implemented as a stack at the moment it is not stated explicitly anywhere (this goes all the way back to R 0.64 so chances are that only Ross can comment..). However, for practical purposes it would be potentially dangerous to have it work like a flag because you can simply never know whether the same object was not already registered by some other code.

Reading the source (below, from memory.c) I think not, but some confirmation would help.

void R_PreserveObject(SEXP object)
{
   R_PreciousList = CONS(object, R_PreciousList);
}

static SEXP RecursiveRelease(SEXP object, SEXP list)
{
   if (!isNull(list)) {
	if (object == CAR(list))
	    return CDR(list);
	else
	    CDR(list) = RecursiveRelease(object, CDR(list));
   }
   return list;
}

void R_ReleaseObject(SEXP object)
{
   R_PreciousList =  RecursiveRelease(object, R_PreciousList);
}


I'd also be interested if there is some ideas on the relative efficiency of the preserve/release mechanism compared to PROTECT/UNPROTECT.

PROTECT/UNPROTECT is more efficient because all it does is a pointer assignment -- Preserve has to allocate new node and fill it with all parts. On release the extra node is still floating in the GC pool etc.

Normally there is not really a question of choice - within a call you want to use PROTET/UNPROTECT and for anything else you simply cannot use it so you have to use Preserve/Release. As a side note Preserve/Release is merely a convenience call, it is often more efficient to simply assign the object to another object you have control of (which is all Preserve really does).

Cheers,
Simon