Ownership Transfer

The keyword owned is used to transfer ownership.

• As a prefix of a parameter type, it means that ownership of the object is transferred into this code context.
• As an type conversion operator, it can be used to avoid duplicating non-reference counting classes, which is usually impossible in Vala.

For example:

Foo foo = (owned) bar;

This means that bar will be set to null and foo inherits the reference/ownership of the object bar references.