What is the best way to free up memory from a TypedArray in JavaScript?

Question

I understand fully that the garbage collector will eventually do it's job and free up the memory allocated in a TypedArray in exactly the same way as it would any variable or object (assuming there are no circular references etc).

However, I am doing a lot of continuous processing in a number of WebWorkers and I would therefore like to have this memory freed as soon as possible by the GC. Using normal JavaScript arrays, simply setting array.length = 0; is a good way a doing exactly this, but what about when using TypedArray's?

Would the following result in the memory being freed as soon as possible?

var testArray = new Uint8Array(buffer);

///Do stuff with testArray

tesArray.length = 0;

Or since the TypedArray is simply a view over the ArrayBuffer, would I need to clear the actual buffer itself also? If so, how?

Answer 1

Nulling the references to the typed array should be good enough. Setting .length = 0 does not work, as - in contrast to usual arrays - the length property is readonly.

Should you really experience problems with the garbage collector, I would recommend to try reusing the same buffer over and over, instead of allocating new ones all the time and hoping for them to get freed.