11.4.1 Invocation

The first thing that anyone should know about garbage collection is: when and how the garbage collector is invoked. One might think that this could happen every time new memory is allocated, e.g. new objects are created, but this is not the case. Instead, we have the following situation:

The entry point of any process of garbage collection is an invocation of the function garbage_collect_1 in file alloc.c. The invocation can occur explicitly by calling the function Fgarbage_collect (in addition this function provides information about the freed memory), or can occur implicitly in four different situations:

1. In function main_1 in file emacs.c. This function is called at each startup of xemacs. The garbage collection is invoked after all initial creations are completed, but only if a special internal error checking-constant ERROR_CHECK_GC is defined.
2. In function disksave_object_finalization in file alloc.c. The only purpose of this function is to clear the objects from memory which need not be stored with xemacs when we dump out an executable. This is only done by Fdump_emacs or by Fdump_emacs_data respectively (both in emacs.c). The actual clearing is accomplished by making these objects unreachable and starting a garbage collection. The function is only used while building xemacs.
3. In function Feval / eval in file eval.c. Each time the well known and often used function eval is called to evaluate a form, one of the first things that could happen, is a potential call of garbage_collect_1. There exist three global variables, consing_since_gc (counts the created cons-cells since the last garbage collection), gc_cons_threshold (a specified threshold after which a garbage collection occurs) and always_gc. If always_gc is set or if the threshold is exceeded, the garbage collection will start.
4. In function Ffuncall / funcall in file eval.c. This function evaluates calls of elisp functions and works according to Feval.

The upshot is that garbage collection can basically occur everywhere Feval, respectively Ffuncall, is used - either directly or through another function. Since calls to these two functions are hidden in various other functions, many calls to garbage_collect_1 are not obviously foreseeable, and therefore unexpected. Instances where they are used that are worth remembering are various elisp commands, as for example or, and, if, cond, while, setq, etc., miscellaneous gui_item_... functions, everything related to eval (Feval_buffer, call0, ...) and inside Fsignal. The latter is used to handle signals, as for example the ones raised by every QUIT-macro triggered after pressing Ctrl-g.