41.10. $mergeArea

$mergeArea merges the contents of srcArea into dstArea (i.e., all dynamic objects and STRINGs in srcArea wind up in dstArea), then gets rid of the srcArea area and sets the srcArea parameter to NULLPOINTER.

The attribute bits for dstArea are unaffected by the attribute bits for srcArea, except that the following bits are cleared in dstArea if they are not set for srcArea:

$noCollectablePtrs
$noCompactablePtrs
$noCollectableStrs

In other words, if either the source or destination area might contain collectable or compactible data before the call to $mergeArea, the destination area is treated as if it might contain such data after the call to $mergeArea.