Weak references in Swift playground don’t work as expected

I believe the top-level function (REPL/playground) is keeping a strong reference to facilitate interactive behavior, and cleaning up when the frame returns. This behavior eliminates memory leaks in the interactive environment.

I copied Viktor‘s simple example and used the xcrun swift REPL.

In REPL mode, I wrapped the logic in a function and it works as expected. If/when you care when the memory is cleaned up, I would suggest wrapping your logic in a function.

// declaration of the types
class Person {
   let name: String
   weak var home: Apartment?

  init(pName: String){
      name = pName
  }

}

class Apartment {
    let postalCode: Int

    init(pPostalCode: Int) {
        postalCode = pPostalCode
    }
}

func testArc() {
    // create Person object
    var personJulius: Person = Person(pName: "Julius")

    // create Apartment object
    var apartmentBerlin: Apartment? = Apartment(pPostalCode: 10777)

    // connect Apartment object and Person object
    personJulius.home = apartmentBerlin

    // Set only strong reference of Apartment object to nil
    apartmentBerlin = nil

    // Person object should now have nil as home
    if personJulius.home != nil {
        println("Julius does live in a destroyed apartment")
    } else {
        println("everything as it should")
    }

}

//outputs "everything as it should"
testArc()