Are reference cycles bad form?

[Steven Taschuk]

Quoth Manuel M Garcia:
> On Sat, 19 Apr 2003 11:16:10 -0600, Steven Taschuk
> <staschuk at telusplanet.net> wrote:
> 
> >Imho this is an engineering question, not a style question.  [...]
>
> In my current case, it feels more like a style question, instead of an
> engineering question.  [...performance and memory use are irrelevant...]

Ah.  So you're optimizing for clarity (rather than, say,
performance); that is indeed a matter of style.

Imho structures with reference cycles are not intrinsically more
or less clear than structures without, so as a general principle
they are neither good form nor bad form.  (In a particular case,
of course, their presence might enable a clearer algorithm or
simplify other aspects of the data structure; in such cases they
are good form, though only indirectly.)

In other words, don't worry about using reference cycles qua using
reference cycles; only worry about them insofar as they affect the
clarity of other things.

  [...]
> Happily, Python code is easy to refactor, so I am more likely in
> Python to experiment with different data structures and algorithms,
> and pick the one that feels 'cleanest'.

Just so!

-- 
Steven Taschuk                  staschuk at telusplanet.net
"Telekinesis would be worth patenting."  -- James Gleick