Buffer.parent?

[tolmasky]

Buffers seem to have a parent object:

new Buffer('a').parent

I see no mention of this in the docs anywhere, and was just curious what this is.

Thanks,

Francisco

[mscdex]

buffer.parent stores the parent Buffer instance when you call buffer.slice(), since slices reference the memory of the original buffer (no data copies are made). For new Buffers not originating from a slice, it's set to a chunk of memory from the pre-existing memory pool.

Additionally, I believe it also helps with GC, so that when all slices of a particular buffer get GC'ed, the parent buffer can then be automatically and safely GC'ed.

[benjamingr]

Note that undocumented properties are not something you can generally rely on in your code.