Gregory Ewing <greg.ew...@canterbury.ac.nz> writes: > Alan Bawden wrote: > > the Java Language > > Specification contains the following language: > > Optimizing transformations of a program can be designed that reduce > > the number of objects that are reachable to be less than those which > > would naively be considered reachable. For example, a Java compiler > > or code generator may choose to set a variable or parameter that > > will no longer be used to null to cause the storage for such an > > object to be potentially reclaimable sooner. > > However, it only makes sense to do that if the compiler can be > sure that reclaiming the object can't possibly have any side > effects. That's certainly not true of things like file objects > that reference resources outside of the program. I'd be pretty > upset if a Java implementation prematurely closed my files on > the basis of this clause.
The Java compiler has no way to know whether a variable references an object with a finalize() method that has side effects, so that quote from the Specification licenses a Java implementation to do exactly the thing you say will make you upset. -- Alan Bawden -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
