Re: [Rubydotnet-developer] Dead in the water

[Tim S. <ti...@ih...>]

On Wed, Oct 08, 2003 at 04:31:17PM +0200, Thomas Sondergaard wrote:
[...]
> Nothing much has happened on my end. I have started porting my extension
> to use C# with P/Invoke instead of C++ with managed extensions so it
> will be easier to port between Microsoft, Mono and dotgnu. I am
> currently trying to figure out how safe it is to use P/Invoke with the
> ruby API. I am especially concerned about the ruby garbage collector, so
> I am trying to understand how it works.
[...]

Sorry for replying so late to this thread...

I believe[*] that if a C function returns a char* and you tell .NET that it
returns a string, .NET takes responsibility for freeing the buffer. This
is bad if the char* was an RSTRING(s)->ptr.

Instead, have it return a System.IntPtr and then use
string s = System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.PtrToStringAnsi(ptr);

Similar issues exist with other types.

[*] This is my interpretation of the .NET documentation.