Subject: bug#42013: 26.3; hash tables are not garbage collected

From: Hendrik Tews <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2020 00:20:32 +0200

Hi,

I have the impression hash tables and their content are not
garbage collected when the hash table is not referenced any more.
Consider the following piece of elisp code:

    (let (gc-start gc-state hash symbol result)
      ;; record gc statistics
      (setq gc-start (garbage-collect))
      ;; create a hash and put an uninterned symbol into it
      (setq hash (make-hash-table))
      (setq symbol (make-symbol "x"))
      (puthash symbol t hash)
      ;; take gc stats and record the differences of used symbols and used
      ;; vectors in result
      (setq gc-state (garbage-collect))
      (push (list 'sym1 (- (caddr (assoc 'symbols gc-state))
                           (caddr (assoc 'symbols gc-start))))
            result)
      (push (list 'vec1 (- (caddr (assoc 'vectors gc-state))
                           (caddr (assoc 'vectors gc-start))))
            result)
      ;; make the symbol and the hash inaccessible 
      (setq symbol nil)
      (setq hash nil)
      ;; take gc stats again and record the differences of used symbols
      ;; and used vectors in result
      (setq gc-state (garbage-collect))
      (push (list 'sym2 (- (caddr (assoc 'symbols gc-state))
                           (caddr (assoc 'symbols gc-start))))
            result)
      (push (list 'vec2 (- (caddr (assoc 'vectors gc-state))
                           (caddr (assoc 'vectors gc-start))))
            result)
      result)

With emacs -Q it returns ((vec2 5) (sym2 1) (vec1 5) (sym1 1)),
while I was expecting ((vec2 0) (sym2 0) ...).

What am I doing wrong that prevents the third call to
garbage-collect to garbage collect the hash and the uninterned
symbol?

Note that with inserting a clrhash before setting hash to nil,
the symbol gets collected, but the vectors won't. What is needed
to garbage collect a hash table?

Thanks,

Hendrik

text generated by report-emacs-bug:

In GNU Emacs 26.3 (build 2, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.24.20)
 of 2020-05-17, modified by Debian built on x86-csail-01
Windowing system distributor 'The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.12008000
System Description:	Debian GNU/Linux bullseye/sid

Recent messages:
For information about GNU Emacs and the GNU system, type C-h C-a.

Configured using:
 'configure --build x86_64-linux-gnu --prefix=/usr
 --sharedstatedir=/var/lib --libexecdir=/usr/lib
 --localstatedir=/var/lib --infodir=/usr/share/info
 --mandir=/usr/share/man --enable-libsystemd --with-pop=yes
 --enable-locallisppath=/etc/emacs:/usr/local/share/emacs/26.3/site-lisp:/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp:/usr/share/emacs/26.3/site-lisp:/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp
 --with-sound=alsa --without-gconf --with-mailutils --build
 x86_64-linux-gnu --prefix=/usr --sharedstatedir=/var/lib
 --libexecdir=/usr/lib --localstatedir=/var/lib
 --infodir=/usr/share/info --mandir=/usr/share/man --enable-libsystemd
 --with-pop=yes
 --enable-locallisppath=/etc/emacs:/usr/local/share/emacs/26.3/site-lisp:/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp:/usr/share/emacs/26.3/site-lisp:/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp
 --with-sound=alsa --without-gconf --with-mailutils --with-x=yes
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 -Wformat -Werror=format-security -Wall' 'CPPFLAGS=-Wdate-time
 -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2' LDFLAGS=-Wl,-z,relro'

Configured features:
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NOTIFY ACL LIBSELINUX GNUTLS LIBXML2 FREETYPE M17N_FLT LIBOTF XFT ZLIB
TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS GTK3 X11 XDBE XIM THREADS LIBSYSTEMD LCMS2

Important settings:
  value of $LANG: en_US.UTF-8
  value of $XMODIFIERS: @im=ibus
  locale-coding-system: utf-8-unix

Major mode: Lisp Interaction

Minor modes in effect:
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  auto-composition-mode: t
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  auto-compression-mode: t
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Load-path shadows:
None found.

Features:
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Memory information:
((conses 16 96516 5845)
 (symbols 48 20785 1)
 (miscs 40 45 96)
 (strings 32 29163 1930)
 (string-bytes 1 763910)
 (vectors 16 14012)
 (vector-slots 8 507754 6556)
 (floats 8 49 68)
 (intervals 56 268 0)
 (buffers 992 12))