class Reference

Overview

Reference is the base class of classes you define in your program. It is set as a class' superclass when you don't specify one:

class MyClass # < Reference
end

A reference type is passed by reference: when you pass it to methods, return it from methods or assign it to variables, a pointer is actually passed.

Invoking new on a Reference allocates a new instance on the heap. The instance's memory is automatically freed (garbage-collected) when the instance is no longer referred by any other entity in the program.

Direct Known Subclasses

Defined in:

primitives.cr
reference.cr

Instance Method Summary

Instance methods inherited from class Object

!=(other) !=, !~(other) !~, ==(other) ==, ===(other)
===(other : YAML::Any)
===(other : JSON::Any) ===, =~(other) =~, class class, crystal_type_id crystal_type_id, dup dup, hash hash, inspect(io : IO)
inspect inspect, itself itself, not_nil! not_nil!, tap(&block) tap, to_json to_json, to_pretty_json(io : IO)
to_pretty_json to_pretty_json, to_s
to_s(io : IO) to_s, to_yaml
to_yaml(io : IO) to_yaml, try(&block) try

Class methods inherited from class Object

==(other : Class) ==, ===(other) ===, cast(other) : self cast, clone clone, dup dup, from_json(string_or_io, root : String) : self
from_json(string_or_io) : self from_json, from_yaml(string : String) : self from_yaml, hash hash, inspect(io) inspect, name : String name, to_s(io) to_s, |(other : U.class) |

Instance Method Detail

def ==(other) #

Returns false (other can only be a Value here).


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def ==(other : self) #

Returns true if this reference is the same as other. Invokes #same?


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def dup #

Returns a shallow copy of this object.

This allocates a new object and copies the contents of self into it.


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def hash #

Returns this reference's #object_id as the hash value.


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def inspect(io : IO) : Nil #

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def object_id : UInt64 #

Returns a UInt64 that uniquely identifies this object.

The returned value is the memory address of this object.

string = "hello"
string.object_id # => 4460249568

pointer = Pointer(String).new(string.object_id)
string2 = pointer.as(String)
string2.object_id == string.object_id # => true

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def same?(other : Reference) #

Returns true if this reference is the same as other. This is only true if this reference's #object_id is the same as other's.


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def same?(other : Nil) #

Returns false: a reference is never nil.


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def to_s(io : IO) : Nil #

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