checking if jsonb was detoasted and releasing memory

Started by Igor Stassiyabout 11 years ago2 messagesgeneral
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#1Igor Stassiy
istassiy@gmail.com

Let us say that the datum of type Datum contains a Jsonb* type.
Then after the call

Jsonb *jb = DatumGetJsonb(datum);

the jb might point to a palloc'ed structure, in case detoasting took place.
So the question is if this is the right way to free up the memory after
checking that the jb was detoasted?

if ((void *)jb != DatumGetPointer(datum))
pfree(jb); // free if detoasted

#2Tom Lane
tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us
In reply to: Igor Stassiy (#1)
Re: checking if jsonb was detoasted and releasing memory

Igor Stassiy <istassiy@gmail.com> writes:

Let us say that the datum of type Datum contains a Jsonb* type.
Then after the call

Jsonb *jb = DatumGetJsonb(datum);

the jb might point to a palloc'ed structure, in case detoasting took place.
So the question is if this is the right way to free up the memory after
checking that the jb was detoasted?

if ((void *)jb != DatumGetPointer(datum))
pfree(jb); // free if detoasted

For the most part the answer is "don't bother". Except in very narrow
cases, it's not worth it to clean up such values retail as opposed to
letting the next evaluation context reset get rid of them in bulk.

The code you proposed will work, but it's ugly and usually a net waste
of cycles. It also embeds assumptions we might want to change someday.

regards, tom lane

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