Python vs Java garbage collection?

[Robert Oschler]

"Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de> wrote in message
news:au83ji$4fa$00$1 at news.t-online.com...

> I see. This is precisely the definition of Python's __del__ method: it
> is called when the reference count drops to zero, atleast for CPython.
>

True, but unless I misread the previous posts in this thread, the language
spec does not guarantee this behavior, even for CPython, and therefore
taking advantage of it might "break" something in the future.  If it became
a guaranteed item then that would be great.  Xmas? :)

thx