Carl Banks wrote: > On Feb 21, 1:22 pm, Nicola Musatti <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> There are other downsides to garbage collection, as the fact that it >> makes it harder to implement the Resource Acquisition Is >> Initialization idiom, due to the lack of deterministic destruction. > > That's not a downside: it's at least a wash. > > In C++ you manage memory and the language manages resources. In > Python you manage resources and the language manages memory. > > RAII is merely one way of minimizing complexity. Garbage collection > is another way.
If you've already got a generic, language-supported way to manage resources (like RAII with deterministic destruction), then why bother with garbage collection? I'm not trying to knock it; it was a big step up from C-style "who forgot to delete a pointer" games. It just seems to me like a solution to something that's no longer a problem, at least in well-written C++ code. I'll take destructors over GC any day. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
