createCleaner

Creates a Cleaner object that runs cleanupAction with given resource some time after its deallocation.

Example of usage:

class ResourceWrapper {
    private val resource = Resource()

    private val cleaner = createCleaner(resource) { it.dispose() }
}

When ResourceWrapper becomes unused and gets deallocated, its cleaner is also deallocated, and the resource is disposed later.

It is not specified which thread runs cleanupAction, as well as whether two or more cleanup actions from different cleaners can be run in parallel.

Note: if resource refers (directly or indirectly) the cleaner, then both might leak, and the cleanupAction will not be called in this case. For example, the code below has a leak:

class LeakingResourceWrapper {
    private val resource = Resource()
    private val cleaner = createCleaner(this) { it.resource.dispose() }
}

In this case cleaner's argument (LeakingResourceWrapper) can't be deallocated until cleanupAction (it.resource.dispose()) is executed, which can happen only strictly after the cleaner is deallocated, which can't happen until LeakingResourceWrapper is deallocated. So the requirements on object deallocations are contradictory in this case, which can't be handled gracefully. The cleanup action is not executed then, and cleaner and its argument might leak (depending on the implementation). The same problem occures when cleanupAction captures a value that refers (directly or indirectly) the cleaner:

class LeakingResourceWrapper {
    private val cleaner = createCleaner(...) {
        doSomething()
        ...
    }

    private fun doSomething() {
        ...
    }
}

In the example above the cleanup lambda implicitly captures this object to call doSomething().

cleanupAction should not use @ThreadLocal globals, because it may be executed on a different thread.

If cleanupAction throws an exception, the behavior is unspecified.

Cleaners cannot be used to perform actions during the program shutdown:

• cleaners that are referenced from globals will not be garbage collected at all,

• cleaners that become unreferenced just before exiting main() might not be garbage collected, because the GC might not get a chance to run.

Parameters