The WebAssembly GC API provides a way to add garbage collection capabilities to your web assembly code. To use the API, you must first call the gc.init() function. This function initializes the garbage collector and sets up the necessary data structures for it to work properly. After calling gc.init(), you can then use the other functions in the API, such as gc.alloc(), gc.free(), and gc.cleanup(). For more information on how to use the WebAssembly GC API, please refer to the official documentation here.
The gc.alloc() method is used to allocate memory in WebAssembly for garbage collection. This method is part of the WebAssembly GC API and is used to create a new object in the heap. The gc.alloc() method takes two parameters, the size of the object and the type of object to be allocated. The size parameter is an integer representing the number of bytes to be allocated, while the type parameter is a string representing the type of object to be allocated. For example, if you want to allocate an array of integers, you would use gc.alloc(4, 'int').
When using gc.alloc(), it is important to remember that memory allocated with this method will not be automatically freed when the program exits. To free memory allocated with gc.alloc(), you must call the gc.free() method. Additionally, it is important to note that memory allocated with gc.alloc() will not be garbage collected until the gc.cleanup() method is called.
For more information on using the WebAssembly GC API to add garbage collection capabilities to your web assembly code, please refer to the official documentation at webassembly.org/docs/garbage-collection/.
The WebAssembly GC API provides a gc.free() function to free memory allocated by the gc.alloc() function. This function takes a pointer to the memory block to be freed as an argument and returns a boolean indicating whether the operation was successful or not. To use this function, you must first call gc.init() to initialize the garbage collector.
To free a memory block, you must pass the pointer to the memory block as an argument to the gc.free() function. The pointer must be valid and must have been allocated by the gc.alloc() function. If the pointer is invalid or has not been allocated by gc.alloc(), then the gc.free() function will return false and the memory block will not be freed.
Once all memory blocks have been freed, you should call gc.cleanup() to clean up any remaining resources used by the garbage collector. This will ensure that all memory blocks are properly freed and that no resources are leaked.
The gc.cleanup() method is used to clean up the memory allocated by the WebAssembly GC API. This method should be called when the application is finished using the garbage collection capabilities of the API. It will free up any memory that was allocated by the gc.alloc() method and reset the garbage collector state. To use this method, simply call it with no arguments:
gc.cleanup();