garbage collection - If you replace functions at runtime, will Clojure/JVM GC old code?

Question

If you replace functions at runtime frequently, the way this poster wanted to do for the purposes of genetic-programming, will Clojure/JVM GC old code?

Answer 1

When in doubt, ask the computer! I wrote a quick test:

(ns tst.demo.core
  (:use demo.core tupelo.core tupelo.test))
  
(defn create-fn
  [n]
  (let [fname   (symbol (format "add-%d" n))
        body    (vector '[x] (list '+ n 'x))
        fn-form (apply list 'clojure.core/defn fname body)
        fn-ref  (eval fn-form)]
    fn-ref))

(defn create-and-call-fn
  [n]
  (let [fn-ref (create-fn n)
        fn-result (fn-ref 3)]
    (when-not (= (+ 3 n) fn-result)
      (throw (ex-info "bad result" (vals->map n fn-result))))))


(dotest
  (let [f5 (create-fn 5)
        f5-result (f5 3)]
    (is= 8 f5-result))
  (dotimes [i 99999]
    (when (zero? (mod i 100)) (spyx i))
    (create-and-call-fn i)))

and up to 100K function creations later, it still works. YMMV!

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The above is based on this template project.