Comment by corsix

Unfortunately things aren't so simple, as when doing JIT compilation, LuaJIT _will_ try to shorten the lifetimes of local variables. Using the latest available version of LuaJIT (https://github.com/LuaJIT/LuaJIT/commit/0d313b243194a0b8d239...), the following reliably fails for me:

  local ffi = require"ffi"
  local function collect_lots()
    for i = 1, 20 do collectgarbage() end
  end
  local function f(s)
    local blob = ffi.new"int[2]"
    local interior = blob + 1
    interior[0] = 13 -- should become the return value
    s:gsub(".", collect_lots)
    return interior[0] -- kept alive by blob?
  end
  for i = 1, 60 do
    local str = ("x"):rep(i - 59)
    assert(f(str) == 13) -- can fail!!
  end