[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Paul Rubin wrote: > >>Jean-Paul Calderone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >> >>>>which more explicitly shows the semantics actually desired. Not that >>>>"huge" a benefit as far as I can tell. Lisp programmers have gotten >>>>along fine without it for 40+ years... >>> >>>Uh yea. No lisp programmer has ever written a with-* function... ever. >> >>The context was Lisp programmers have gotten along fine without >>counting on the refcounting GC semantics that sjdevnull advocates >>Python stay with. GC is supposed to make it look like every object >>stays around forever, and any finalizer that causes an explicit >>internal state change in an extant object (like closing a file or >>socket) is not in the GC spirit to begin with. > > > I disagree, strongly. If you want "every object stays around forever" > semantics, you can just not free anything. GC is actually supposed to > free things that are unreachable at least when memory becomes tight, > and nearly every useful garbage collected language allows destructors > that could have effects visible to the rest of the program. Reference > counting allows more deterministic semantics that can eliminate > repeating scope information multiple times. > Clearly you guys are determined to disagree. It seemed obvious to me that Paul's reference to making it "look like every object stays around forever" doesn't exclude their being garbage-collected once the program no longer contains any reference to them.
You simplify the problems involved with GC-triggered destructors to the point of triviality. There are exceedingly subtle and difficult issues here: read some of the posts to the python-dev list about such issues and then see if you still feel the same way. regards Steve -- Steve Holden +44 150 684 7255 +1 800 494 3119 Holden Web LLC/Ltd http://www.holdenweb.com Skype: holdenweb http://holdenweb.blogspot.com Recent Ramblings http://del.icio.us/steve.holden -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
