On Feb 24, 8:05 pm, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <l...@geek- central.gen.new_zealand> wrote: > In message <op.u8nfpex8y5e...@laptopwanja>, Wanja Gayk wrote: > > > Reference counting is about the worst technique for garbage collection. > > It avoids the need for garbage collection.
That's like saying that driving a VW Beetle avoids the need for an automobile. Reference counting is a form of garbage collection (like mark-sweep, copy-collect, and others), not a way of avoiding it. You're right that ref counting in many implementations is more deterministic than other common forms of garbage collection; IMO, Python would be well-served by making the ref-counting semantics it currently has a guaranteed part of the language spec--or at least guaranteeing that when a function returns, any otherwise unreferenced locals are immediately collected. I could be convinced otherwise, but I _think_ that that change would offer an alternative to all of the interesting cases of where the "with" statement is "useful". -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
