Ruby automatically reclaims unused memory

by Jii Yoo
…
Note
|
Writing

In languages like C and C++, memory allocation and deallocation must be handled manually. Ruby, however, features automatic memory management through a garbage collector, eliminating the need for explicit allocation or deallocation (as do many other garbage-collected languages).

Below is a simple Person class that takes name and age as parameters:

class Person
	def initialize(name, age)
		@name = name
		@age = age
	end

	def to_s
		puts "Name: #{@name}  Age: #{@age}"
	end
end

10.times do |i|
	person = Person.new("madelen#{i}", 17 + i.to_i)
	person.to_s
end

In this loop, a new Person object is created on each iteration, but there’s no explicit deletion or memory deallocation. Will this cause a memory leak? No.

Ruby’s garbage collector automatically reclaims memory from objects that are no longer accessible. When a new object is assigned to the person variable in each iteration, the previously assigned object becomes unreachable. Once no references remain, Ruby’s garbage collector removes it and frees the memory.

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