Circular references and python

[Thomas Hamelryck]

Tim Peters <tim_one at email.msn.com> wrote:
: Speed isn't the hangup in the Python world.  It's much more ease of porting
: to new platforms (the amount of time spent now on porting CPython's gc: 0),
: and CPython's extraordinary friendliness to extending and embedding.

Ahem...for some reason I took a look at the DrScheme homepage. The underlying
language MzScheme runs on Windows 95/98/NT, MacOS, and Unix, uses garbage 
collection and is extendible in C/C++. I took a look at the extension manual 
and it seems pretty similar to what is posible in Python. So maybe sometghing
can be learned from looking at a couple of other (maybe a bit more academic) 
scripting languages?

A couple of moths ago I felt a strange urge to read a 20+ page article on 
garbage collection. It discussed various GC techniques, including reference 
counting. The general opinion on reference counting seems to be that it's 
still a valuable technique for real time systems and parallel computing. 
But not for more general use.

Cheers,

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Thomas Hamelryck    Institute of Molecular and Structural Biology
Aarhus University   Gustav Wieds Vej 10C
DK-8000 Aarhus C    Denmark