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Bug #59230 Order matters when calling unset() on surface and context variables
Submitted: 2010-05-25 09:13 UTC Modified: 2010-06-02 09:08 UTC
From: dave dot mulford at gmail dot com Assigned:
Status: Not a bug Package: cairo (PECL)
PHP Version: 5.2.10 OS: gentoo linux-2.6.30
Private report: No CVE-ID: None
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 [2010-05-25 09:13 UTC] dave dot mulford at gmail dot com 
Description:
------------
Calling unset() on a surface and context variables in the incorrect order produces a memory leak. This is possibly a documentation bug?

Reproduce code:
---------------
Link to source. Lines 56 & 57 are the offending lines.
http://pastebin.com/cQyHWDuy



Expected result:
----------------
$ php cairo_poly_memleak_reproduce.php
Generating cairo polygon...[OK]
memory usage: 108936

Generating cairo polygon...[OK]
memory usage: 108936

Generating cairo polygon...[OK]
memory usage: 108936

Generating cairo polygon...[OK]
memory usage: 108936

Generating cairo polygon...[OK]
memory usage: 108936
^C

Actual result:
--------------
$ php cairo_poly_memleak_reproduce.php
Generating cairo polygon...[OK]
memory usage: 109208

Generating cairo polygon...[OK]
memory usage: 109480

Generating cairo polygon...[OK]
memory usage: 109752

Generating cairo polygon...[OK]
memory usage: 110024

Generating cairo polygon...[OK]
memory usage: 110296
^C

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 [2010-06-01 15:55 UTC] markskilbeck at gmail dot com 
Congrats - you've discovered PHP 5.2's sucky Garbage 
Collection.

The issue is basically this: you have a surface and you have 
a context. Your context has a reference to said surface, and 
your surface a reference to said context, allowing you to 
get the context from the surface. When you destroy the 
context its ref-count is decremented. However, we still have 
a remaining reference to this context in the surface so the 
context isn't freed. When you then destroy the surface, it 
doesn't destroy the context, leaving a ref-count > 0 for the 
context zval. As such, the memory is never GC'd (freed by 
the Garbage Collector) and you have a memory leak.

This issue was fixed in 5.3

The documentation will be updated with a note on this 
behaviour.
 [2010-06-01 15:56 UTC] markskilbeck at gmail dot com 
Some references: 

http://derickrethans.nl/circular-references.html
http://www.php.net/manual/en/features.gc.refcounting-
basics.php (last paragraph)
 [2010-06-02 07:35 UTC] markskilbeck@php.net 
Thank you for taking the time to write to us, but this is not
a bug.

See above comments
 [2010-06-02 09:08 UTC] dave dot mulford at gmail dot com 
Awesome. Thanks for the info. I've been trying to get our organization to switch to php-5.3 for some time now.
 
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