Thank you for helping us improve the quality of Unity Documentation. Although we cannot accept all submissions, we do read each suggested change from our users and will make updates where applicable.
CloseFor some reason your suggested change could not be submitted. Please <a>try again</a> in a few minutes. And thank you for taking the time to help us improve the quality of Unity Documentation.
Close| target | The managed array to pin. It should be a valid array managed by the garbage collector. |
| gcHandle | The handle to associate with the pinned object. This should be managed properly to ensure it is correctly released. |
void* A pointer to the first element of the pinned array. Use this pointer for direct memory access to the array elements.
Pins a garbage-collected (GC) array and returns the address of its first element, ensuring the array's memory location remains fixed.
The PinGCArrayAndGetDataAddress method pins a managed array in memory, preventing the garbage collector from relocating it. This is crucial when interfacing with native code or conducting low-level memory operations involving managed arrays. Use this method to obtain a stable pointer to array elements for performance-critical operations.
After pinning an array, release the GC handle using UnsafeUtility.ReleaseGCObject when the array no longer needs to be pinned to avoid resource leaks.
using UnityEngine; using Unity.Collections.LowLevel.Unsafe; using System;
public class PinArrayExample : MonoBehaviour { void Start() { int[] managedArray = { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 };
// Pin the managed array and get the address of its first element unsafe { void* dataPtr = UnsafeUtility.PinGCArrayAndGetDataAddress(managedArray, out ulong gcHandle);
Debug.Log($"Address of first element: {(IntPtr)dataPtr}");
// Manipulate the array data directly using the pointer int* intPtr = (int*)dataPtr; for (int i = 0; i < managedArray.Length; i++) { intPtr[i] *= 2; // Double each element in the array }
// Verify changes by logging the updated array Debug.Log("Contents of managed array after manipulation:"); for (int i = 0; i < managedArray.Length; i++) { Debug.Log(managedArray[i]); // Expected output: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 }
// Release the GC handle once done UnsafeUtility.ReleaseGCObject(gcHandle); }
// Confirm that the GC handle is released Debug.Log("GC handle released, managed array unpinned."); } }
Additional resources: UnsafeUtility.PinGCArrayAndGetDataAddress.
Did you find this page useful? Please give it a rating:
Thanks for rating this page!
What kind of problem would you like to report?
Thanks for letting us know! This page has been marked for review based on your feedback.
If you have time, you can provide more information to help us fix the problem faster.
Provide more information
You've told us this page needs code samples. If you'd like to help us further, you could provide a code sample, or tell us about what kind of code sample you'd like to see:
You've told us there are code samples on this page which don't work. If you know how to fix it, or have something better we could use instead, please let us know:
You've told us there is information missing from this page. Please tell us more about what's missing:
You've told us there is incorrect information on this page. If you know what we should change to make it correct, please tell us:
You've told us this page has unclear or confusing information. Please tell us more about what you found unclear or confusing, or let us know how we could make it clearer:
You've told us there is a spelling or grammar error on this page. Please tell us what's wrong:
You've told us this page has a problem. Please tell us more about what's wrong:
Thank you for helping to make the Unity documentation better!
Your feedback has been submitted as a ticket for our documentation team to review.
We are not able to reply to every ticket submitted.