Only properties should be deleted

Question

I'm getting this error with JSLint: Only properties should be deleted

Why doesn't it like this? The variable I am attempting to delete is very large, so I was hoping to get a jump on the garbage collection. Is this not ok?

Answer 1

delete is meant to delete properties on an object, not regular variables (properties on a VariableObject).

Instead, you could set all references to the value as null. JavaScript's GC will clean it up when it feels it needs to.

Answer 2

if you just want to get rid of the jslint warning, you can try this:

var myHugeVariable = ...;

// do stuff with huge variable

delete window.myHugeVariable;

This should work since all global variables are actually properties of the global object.