Python vs Ruby

[Martin von Loewis]

Yukihiro Matsumoto <matz at zetabits.com> writes:

> The leaks I meant were two fold:
> 
>   * circluar references
>   * wrong ref-counted objects, mostly by extension bugs.
> 
> The former disappeared in Python 2.0.  But the latter still remain.
> Correct me if I'm wrong.

That's right. In addition, the following kinds of objects still leak
in 2.0:

- instance objects participating in a cycle whose class has an __del__
  (they are added to gc.garbage, since finalization behaviour is unclear)

- cycles involving C objects (i.e. custom type instances) whose type
  implementations have not been updated to support the GC. Such types
  are rare, since C extensions typically act as holder of some external
  resource, not as holders of Python objects.

> |I don't know how exactly GC works in Ruby - it is likely that
> |it suffers from things that people would consider as drawbacks, though.
> 
> Maybe, maybe not.

So I shall find some time to study its weaknesses :-)

Regards,
Martin