Remove reference to deleted node

[donnemartin]

Remove reference to deleted node

[donnemartin]

Hi Rafael,

Only updating the top reference doesn't remove the reference the old top (popped item) has to the new top

Can you point me to a link that discusses this further?

For reference, I believe this is the function we are discussing:

    def pop(self):
        if self.top is not None:
            data = self.top.data
            self.top = self.top.next
            return data
        return None

It is my understanding that:

• Python's garbage collector will automatically handle this without the need to "remove references from the node we want to pop".
• If this were C/C++ and that node were created with malloc/new then we should deallocate that memory.

-Donne

[rafadaguiar]

Hi Donne, I misunderstood the way Python gc works. I was thinking that any reference pointing in or out the object would keep it alive, but it's not the case (only references to the object work for that matter).

[donnemartin]

Sounds good, thanks Rafael :)