There are three separate memory areas involved when manipulating Prolog
terms from Java using SPTerm
objects. These areas have
largely independent life times.
SPTerm
object itself.
SPTerm
object also tells Prolog to allocate an
SP_term_ref. SP_term_refs have a life-time that is
independent of the lifetime of the corresponding SPTerm object.
SPTerm
refer to a Prolog term indirectly via a SP_term_ref.
A SP_term_ref ref (created as a side-effect of
creating a SPTerm
object) will be reclaimed if either:
q.close()
or
q.cut()
) or if
q.nextSolution()
is called.
An SPTerm
object will be invalidated (and eventually reclaimed by
the garbage collector) if the corresponding SP_term_ref is
reclaimed as above. If passed an invalidated SP_term_ref, most
methods will throw an IllegalTermException
exception.
A Prolog term (allocated on the Prolog heap) will be deallocated when:
q.close()
or if
q.nextSolution()
is called. The memory is not reclaimed if
the query is closed with
q.cut()
.
Please note: it is possible to get aSPTerm
object and its SP_term_ref to refer to deallocated Prolog terms, in effect creating "dangling" pointers in cases where theSPTerm
would ordinarily still be valid. This will be detected and invalidate theSPTerm
:{ SPTerm old = new SPTerm(sp); SPQuery q; q = sp.openQuery(....); ... old.consFunctor(...); // allocate a Prolog term newer than q ... q.nextSolution(); // or q.close() // error: // The SP_term_ref in q refers to an invalid part of the Prolog heap // the SPTerm old will be invalidated by q.nextSolution() }