[Python-Dev] Weak references

[Guido van Rossum]

[me]
> > - Weak references.  This *is* a PEP, but there's no contents yet.  We
> >   could also try to implement (just) weak dictionaries.

[MAL]
> These already exist... http://www.handshake.de/~dieter/weakdict.html
> 
> mx.Proxy also has an implementation which support weak references.

Thanks.  For Fred to read...

> BTW, are these still needed now that we have GC ?

Yes, definitely.  Weak dicts are sometimes needed for situations where
a regular dict would keep objects alive forever.  E.g. we were made
aware of a "leak" in JPython that could only be fixed with weak dicts:
the Swing wrapper code has a global dict mapping widgets to callback
functions, and this keeps all widgets alive forever.  The Java GC
doesn't destroy the widgets, because they are still referenced from
the dict.  A weak dict solves this problem nicely (if it weren't that
JDK 1.1 doesn't support weak dicts).

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)