Re: [Caml-list] finalizing bigarrays

[Xavier Leroy <xavier.leroy@inria.fr>]

> Can Gc.finalise be used with externally allocated bigarrays?
> I thought it worked only for Caml-allocated types.

It does.  However, a Caml bigarray value is actually a small block
inside the Caml heap, containing pointers to the actual bigarray data.
So, you can attach a finalization function to the Caml bigarray value.

Presumably, this (Caml) function would call a C function that recovers
the pointer to the actual bigarray data, then call your deallocation
function on this pointer.  Something along the lines below:

value my_bigarray_finalize(value v)
{
  struct caml_bigarray * b = Bigarray_val(v);
  if (b->proxy == NULL) {
    my_finalization_function(b->data);
  } else {
    if (-- b->proxy->refcount == 0) {
      my_finalization_function(b->proxy->data);
      stat_free(b->proxy);
    }
  }
  return Val_unit;
}

- Xavier Leroy
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