Deleting NEURON Objects

[edovanveen]

The user currently has to explicitly delete any NEURON Objects by running Object.delete_nrn_obj() in MATLAB. If this method were named Object.delete() it would lead to unexpected behaviour, such as deleting a vector upon calling Vector.append() without catching the output.

Instead we could keep track of whether the MATLAB Object is the owner of the NEURON Object, and if so, run Object.delete_nrn_obj() upon Object.delete().

[ramcdougal]

We should only be telling NEURON to delete the object if its reference count goes to 0.

Presumably deleting it in MATLAB should simply decrement its reference count by 1.

[edovanveen]

Removing clibRelease was causing crashes on reruns, so I put it back for now; it is only run if the MATLAB Object owns the NEURON Object (see Object.objowner and Object.delete() in PR #47). In the future it is advisable to look at this issue again and see if it also works to simply decrease the refcount.

[edovanveen]

I got rid of the objowner nonsense; currently deleting an Object looks like the code below. I still have to do clibRelease because otherwise some examples crash if run in succession.

        function delete(self)
        % Decrease refcount by 1; if refcount is 0, release the C++ Object.
        %   delete()

            self.obj.refcount = self.obj.refcount - 1;

            % We need to do this, or else we get crashes.
            if self.obj.refcount == 0
                clib.neuron.hoc_obj_unref(self.obj);
                clibRelease(self.obj);
            end