Comments on: Two event handler simplifications

By: Marc

Marc — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 14:17:19 +0000

@Alan I’m not sure where this memory leak would occur. The component would have a single reference to the anonymous function. When the component went away there would be no references to that function anymore so it should be a candidate for garbage collection.

The reason I think that… If you do something like this:

myButton.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, function(event:Event) {mainStack.selectedIndex=1;} ,false,0,true);
(Don’t ever do that!)

It’ll make a weak reference to the anonymous method. That method will immediately become a candidate for GC and you’ll get some very odd bugs with it being collected at seemingly random times. That would make me think that when the component goes away, the only reference to the function would go away.

But maybe I’m missing something important, I admit I don’t know how the internals of the anonymous functions work.

By: greg

greg — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 13:35:23 +0000

Huh, never thought about encasing a simple event like the 2nd method. Cool and thanks!

By: Alan

Alan — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 04:28:13 +0000

You’re not worried about memory leaks. Maybe in a small app, bu tin anything larger….just seems to me not worth the shortcut.

By: Marc

Marc — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 00:35:21 +0000

As mentioned, I use either method in only the simple cases. Anything more involved, such as being invoked from multiple places, deserves a proper handler.

By: reyco1

reyco1 — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 23:52:54 +0000

Well, using an anonymous function can be a bit of a double edge sword, especially when you need to execute a handler from two sources. Just me 2 cents.