[Python-Dev] Product iteration

[Guido van Rossum]

> > But in this case, there aren't any custom finalizers involved in the
> > cycle (although there may be some *hanging off* the cycle).
> 
> Yes, but those finalizers hanging off the cycle would occur in some random
> time in the future, not right now, hence rendering the
> 
> def f():
> 	fp = open("fff")
> 	pass
> 
> idiom dangerous, since you're not sure how long fp will remain open.

Aha.  You're complaining about the finalizers being postponed
arbitrarily.  I thought you were complaining about the issue of
finalization order *within* the cycle.

Since this is still an improvement over current practice (where a
finalizer hanging off a cycle may never be called) and there are no
serialization issues, I don't see the problem.

If you want to use weak references, please try to specify *in detail*
which objects would have weak references to which other objects and
how the system would resolve these...  I'm never sure that things can
be made 100% safe using this technique, so it may help to spell it out
for me!

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.pythonlabs.com/~guido/)