automatic reclaiminig of limited resources (was Re: [Python-Dev] Product iteration)

[Jeremy Hylton]

>>>>> "PF" == Peter Funk <pf@artcom-gmbh.de> writes:

  PF> Hi all, This rant is about automatically reclaimed resources
  PF> like file descriptors.

  PF> First let me cite a few sentences from the ancient book
  PF> "Programming Python" written by Mark Lutz (p.122).  Since this
  PF> was the very first available book on Python, it could be
  PF> considered as some kind of Python Programmers Guide.

Feel free to think of it as a guide, but don't think of it as a
specification!  (It is, as you mention, fairly old.)  The only
official word on reclaiming externel resource is the Python Language
Reference -- http://www.python.org/doc/current/ref/.

>Some objects contain references to "external" resources such as open
>files or windows. It is understood that these resources are freed when
>the object is garbage-collected, but since garbage collection is not
>guaranteed to happen, such objects also provide an explicit way to
>release the external resource, usually a close() method. Programs are
>strongly recommended to explicitly close such objects. The
>`try...finally' statement provides a convenient way to do this.

If this isn't clear enough, we could revise it for the next release of
the documentation.  As Guido said, the code is broken, not JPython.

Jeremy