Python 2.0

[Hisao Suzuki]

In article <7j90va$6lk$1 at cronkite.cc.uga.edu>,
graham at sloth.math.uga.edu (Graham Matthews) wrote:
> I am completely confused by this statement. The two people that have
> been advocating GC the hardest are myself and the author of Ruby. Since
> Ruby has GC the author has clearly implemented a collector. ...

Regrettably, I'd have to say that Ruby is (was?) suffering from
its insufficient portability.  Once I have used a certain i860
SVR4 box.  On that box, Ruby did not run but dumped immediately
with its twiddling the machine stack, while Python ran perfectly
with no difficulty.  As far as I know, the collector of Ruby has
not changed so much since then.

(I have before told this to the author of Ruby on a Japanese
Pythoneers' mailing-list against his advocacy of Ruby, and now
he appeared here again with just the same opinion before...)

And one more thing: as the author of Ruby said, Ruby's user
cannot specify her/his arbitrary code as destructor.  If so were
Python, it would not be matter what is the semantics of language
in regard to storage management for users.  Ignoring this point,
the whole discussion might be irrelevant to Python.

As you know from reading any Python-1.*.*/Doc/ext/ext.tex, GC
has been taken into account already, and deliberately turned
down from the current Python.  Only a general or theoretical
discussion would be no use here (except for some evangelism).

--===-----========------------- Sana esprimo naskas sanan ideon.
SUZUKI Hisao            suzuki611 at okisoft.co.jp, suzuki at acm.org.