Hi all, i am hunting a memory leak and suspsect it might be related to `refTo`. I am passing a ByteA...

# kotlin-native

[uli]

Hi all, i am hunting a memory leak and suspsect it might be related to refTo.
I am passing a ByteArray reference by calling bytes.refTo to POSIX read and now wonder when the pinning will be undone? I see that the CValuesRef returned by getPointer takes an AutofreeScope.
Where does that come from? And when is it cleared?
I.e. what is the lifetime of a CValuesRef returned by refTo?

[Dominaezzz]

The result of refTo is indefinitely valid, however when passed to a c interop function, the pointer seen by C is only valid during the function call.

[uli]

thanks @Dominaezzz. that is the directly enclosing function call. as in:

handleError(write(fd, buffer.refTo(0), 255))

the pointer could become invalid after `write`returns?
and buffer can be garbage collected whenever it leaves it’s scope?
So the pointer C sees is generated automagically by the compiler by calling getPointer when it sees a CValueRef being passed? And the compiler also creates the AutofreeScope enclosing the c-interop-call

[Dominaezzz]

That is correct.

[Dominaezzz]

So refTo won't cause a memory leak.

[uli]

Cool. Thanks again.
So now I only have to find my leak 🙂