types.String.weakref

Returns a weak reference to str.

Return value

A weakref pointing at str.

Notes

Takes no arguments; the VM reports the true arity here.

The VM's signature dump shows the receiver as (table|userdata|instance|class|null).weakref(): this binding carries no declared parameter types, so the dump falls back to a generic receiver list used for every such binding, not the real one - the receiver is a string here, as the name types.String.weakref implies.

Every built-in type shares this same type method (a table, an array, an instance, and so on all get their own weakref() the same way), so a weak reference to a string works the same as for any other value.

Example

let s = "hello"
let w = s.weakref()
println("type(w) =", type(w))
println("w.ref() == s =", w.ref() == s)

type(w) = weakref
w.ref() == s = true

See also