More on the memory leak in NSString/String.cString(with:)

Development Core Libraries
1

Hello there,

We have been talking about a known memory leak in String.cString(using: encoding) and String.utf8String over a JIRA report and a closed PR where we considered the option of freeing up the memory allocated by NSString.cString() in String.cString() - this approach isn’t acceptable because it leaves the leak unresolved with NSString.cString().

Thanks to Tony and Philippe for their comments.

The options we are left with are:

  1. See Philippe’s suggestion here - implement an NSData backing and the needed autorelease() simulation on Linux.

  2. What Tony suggests here - "eliding these methods from NSString and implementing them differently in String"

Does anyone else have other approaches to solve this problem?

I am curious about how we will go ahead here and wanted to make sure there is a consensus.

Thanks for your time!

Pushkar N Kulkarni,

IBM Runtimes

Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability - Edsger W. Dijkstra