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kotlinlang

Hi everyone, I have a question. Is Kotlin Reflection a strong reference or a weak reference?

Kotlin Reflect is a library to inspect the structure of the code at runtime, it's not a reference. What exactly are you referring to from this library?

I am thinking about if I retrieve the resource string from ViewModel (I know this is the wrong way but I am just thinking). So if I pass the activity context into the ViewModel, it may lead to a memory leak, right? But if I pass the context::getString instead? Does it still make memory leak happens?

Ah. So you're asking whether function references capture their receiver as a weak or strong reference. I am not 100% sure, but I would say it's a strong reference that prevents garbage collection. The function reference would need to become unreachable itself for the context to be eligible for garbage collection.

a function reference has a tiny bit more magic than a lambda: `{ Unit } != { Unit }` but `obj::func == obj::func`, `{ Unit }.name` doesn't exist but `obj::func.name` does
but in all other ways, it behaves like a lambda

a lambda holds a strong reference to everything it captures

Thank you, guys! Very useful to me. :saluting_face: