# Programming Ruby ### The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide
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module GC

### Index:

disable enable start garbage_collect

The `GC` module provides an interface to Ruby's mark and sweep garbage collection mechanism. Some of the underlying methods are also available via the `ObjectSpace` module, described beginning on page 430.

class methods
disable | GC.disable -> `true` or `false`
|  | Disables garbage collection, returning `true` if garbage collection was already disabled.
`GC.disable` | » | `false`
`GC.disable` | » | `true`
enable | GC.enable -> `true` or `false`
|  | Enables garbage collection, returning `true` if garbage collection was disabled.
`GC.disable` | » | `false`
`GC.enable` | » | `true`
`GC.enable` | » | `false`
start | GC.start -> `nil`
|  | Initiates garbage collection, unless manually disabled.
`GC.start` | » | `nil`

instance methods
garbage_collect | garbage_collect -> `nil`
|  | Equivalent to `GC::start` .
`include GC`
`garbage_collect` | » | `nil`

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Extracted from the book "Programming Ruby - The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide"
Copyright © 2001 by Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Open Publication License, v1.0 or later (the latest version is presently available at http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/)).

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