Python 2.0

[Graham Matthews]

Graham Matthews wrote:
> I really don't understand this. A lot of languages (eg. Java) have
> garbage collection and finalisers. All these languages manage to delete
> objects in an order that does not cause any problems (all finalisers etc
> work).
Salvador =?iso-8859-1?Q?Fandi=F1o?= (fandino at usa.net) wrote:
: I have been using Java since it was invented and I haven't programed a
: finaliser ever. They should run under so unknown and inconsistent
: environment that they are not usable at all (except for freeing external
: resources).

I am not sure I understand this. Can you explain to me how a finaliser
can run in an unknown environment. Surely everything the finaliser needs
is referenced by the finaliser (either directly or indirectly) and hence 
is still there.

Salvador =?iso-8859-1?Q?Fandi=F1o?= (fandino at usa.net) wrote:
: BTW, how could be acceptable that the same __del__ method could be
: called from two totally different schemes (GC reclaiming objects or
: reference count becoming 0)? it would break all the library classes that
: now use __del__ .

Because anything referenced by a __del__ method will always be there
when the __del__ is called, under any GC scheme.

graham
-- 
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