[CLJ-1053] Locals still cleared too aggressively on delay in specific cases

Tue, 9 Apr 2013 11:55:52 -0500

This seems to be an extension of #CLJ-232. Locals are still cleared too aggressively in some specific instances: If the delay throws an exception when realized, and you dereference a local within the delay, the local may or may not be cleared depending on its need in the tail positions (without any obvious pattern). Examples of functions which works as intended and doesn't work as intended follows.

(def d (let [y (delay 0)]
         (delay (if (zero? @y) (/ 0 0) (/ @y 1))))) ; works properly

(def d (let [y (delay 0)]
         (delay (if (zero? @y) (/ 0 0) (/ 1 1))))) ; does not work properly

(def d (let [y (delay 0)]
         (delay (if (zero? @y) (/ @y 0) (/ 1 1))))) ; does not work properly

(def d (let [y (delay 0)]
         (delay (if (zero? @y) (/ @y 0) (/ @y 1))))) ; does not work properly

(def d (let [y (delay 0)]
         (delay @y (/ 0 0)))) ; does not work properly

(def d (let [y (delay 0)]
         (delay @y (/ 0 0) @y))) ; works properly

By "works", d will throw "ArithmeticException Divide by zero" every single time it is dereferenced. By "does not work", d will throw "ArithmeticException Divide by zero" on first dereferencing, but from second and onwards it will throw "NullPointerException [trace missing]".

Clojure JIRA

[CLJ-1053] Locals still cleared too aggressively on delay in specific cases