Does removing a DOM element remove the associated scope?

Question

In Angular, scopes are associated with DOM elements. If you call $element.remove(), does $element.scope().$destroy() end up getting called as well? Or is the developer responsible for cleaning up scopes himself?

This makes me think that it removing a DOM element should automatically remove the scope:

angular.js

/////////////////////////////////////////////
// jQuery mutation patch
//
//  In conjunction with bindJQuery intercepts all jQuery's DOM destruction apis and fires a
// $destroy event on all DOM nodes being removed.
//
/////////////////////////////////////////////

function JQLitePatchJQueryRemove(name, dispatchThis) { /* ... */ }

Answer 1

EDIT:

Angular 1.2.X now patches JQuery to call $destroy

However, I haven't tested to see if I got the same results I saw before.

(Thanks @KumarHarsh for pointing this out in the comments)

---

Old answer (Angular 1.0.X):

No, $element.remove() doesn't remove the scope, presumably because the scope is still referenced by other scopes.

As proof you can remove a scoped element from a nested controller, then load the scope from the parent controller and check $$childHead to see the child scope still exists.

Here is a plunk to demonstrate

Also, you can view the scopes in memory using the Batarang plugin for Chrome