[Python-Dev] recursive closures - reference leak
Hrvoje Niksic
hrvoje.niksic at avl.com
Tue Dec 8 14:52:06 CET 2009
Kristján Valur Jónsson wrote:
> The problem with this is that once you have called factorial() once, you
> end up with a recursive cycle. „factorial“ has become a cell object,
> referencing the „helper“ function, which again refers to the outer cell
> object. This requires „gc“ to clean up. Also, it is entirely
> non-obvious. the problem becomes worse if the inner function also
> refers to some large, temporary variable, since it will get caught up in
> the reference loop.
What problem are you referring to? Python has a gc exactly to deal with
situations like this one. Surely you are aware that the cycle collector
is invoked automatically without requiring user intervention. What
specific issue are you trying to work around?
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