Closing banks

I have a method in a class I am writing that uses TBank and CreateBankStream to save data:

Method SaveToDB(db:Int)
	Local Bank:TBank
	Local Stream:TStream
	Local Str:String
		
	Bank = CreateBank(256)
	Stream = CreateBankStream(Bank)

	' WriteInt, WriteString, etc used to write data to the Stream

	SeekStream(Stream, 0)
	Str = ReadString(Stream, StreamSize(Stream))

	' Str is stored to the DB here
		
	CloseStream(Stream)
EndMethod

I have a few questions on my methodology here:

1. Do I need to destroy the TBank object or will the GC get it? There is no CloseBank() command so I assume that it will be deleted once it goes out of scope at the end of the method.

2. Is there a better way to get a string or equivalent pointer from a bank or stream than "Str = ReadString(Stream, StreamSize(Stream))"? This is passed into a DLL call to store it in the database.

1:

bank=null, then let the garbage collector do its thing..

btw, for garbage 'n things I tend to put thee GCCollected() value on screen in some corner, then you know exactly when something's leaking away.

If the bank is created locally, you don't even need to do that.

Behold:

If you send Self as 'extra' event (created locally in the class) to some hooked function, then bmax seems to be making a copy of it. If you don't NULL this created event you'll end up with a memleak the size of the Self object you were sending, each time you perform this sending of Self.

Took me the best part of a day to find out about this :P

The extent of my use for the TBank variable is the CreateBankStream call, so thus far I believe it will be freed correctly on leaving scope.



Looks like there is a GCCollect() function, but it says it actually runs the garbage collector. So that leads to a couple more questions: does the GC actually run without calling this? I hope so. Also, would calling this frequently cause problems?

arf, yes, ofcourse I meant: GCMemAlloced()

This is sort of OT but I really like BMax's balance of features. I mean, on the surface it doesn't seem like there's a GC in there--but there is. I'm surprised every day at how good this stuff is.