Re: Garbage collection (was Re: JWZ on s/Java/Perl/)

[Hong Zhang]

>   {
>     my $fh = IO::File->new("file");
>     print $fh "foo\n";
>   }
>   {
>     my $fh = IO::File->new("file");
>     print $fh "bar\n";
>   }
> 
> At present "file" will contain "foo\nbar\n".  Without DF it could just
> as well be "bar\nfoo\n".  Make no mistake, this is a major change to the
> semantics of perl.
> 
> Alan Burlison

This code should NEVER work, period. People will just ask for trouble
with this kind of code.

The DF never exists, even with reference count. Can anyone show me how
to deterministically collect circular reference? The current semantics
of perl works most of time, but not always.

What we really are talking about is "Shall Perl provide 90% or 99% of DF?"
The operating system provides 0% during runtime, 100% at process exit.

Hong