destroying joints

[kaishaku]

A nil joint remains active in box2d until the garbage collector runs.

Is there a way to destroy joints explicitly without calling collectgarbage?

[rude]

Not currently, no.

I think my original reasoning was:

Code: Select all

joint = love.physics.newJoint( etc )

-- Do stuff

-- Removes instantly. (Pointer to Box2D object is destroyed here).
joint:destroy() 

-- Methods can still be called, but will fail in all
-- kinds of horrible ways. 
x1, y1, x2, y2 = joint:getPoints() -- doom

That goes for the other objects too. I have no problem with the methods failing after destroy has been called, but they need to fail with the usual error message.

I just got this (obvious) idea:

Code: Select all

function Joint:destroy()
  self:remove()
  self.__index = function() return error("Object has been destroyed.") end
end

... but I'm not sure if that works. I'll check it out. (Other suggestions are welcome).

[kaishaku]

It might be ok to fail in horrible ways after an explicit destroy().

Can you simply assign the symbol a nil value after the explicit destroy()?

Something like that, or possibly your example (not sure), would be ok too.