Need help converting text to csv format

Joe Strout joe at strout.net
Fri Nov 21 12:36:31 EST 2008


On Nov 21, 2008, at 10:26 AM, MRAB wrote:

> The file will be closed automatically when the file object is  
> garbage-collected.
>
> CPython uses reference-counting, so the file object is garbage- 
> collected as soon as there are no references to it.
>
> Jython (and IronPython?) are garbage-collected in the background, so  
> the file object is garbage-collected at some point (and you don't  
> know when that will be!) when there are no longer any references to  
> it.

Thanks all for this clarification.  That is an important distinction.   
(REALbasic uses reference-counting, so you can guarantee that the file  
will be closed as soon as it loses its last reference, but I see that  
we shouldn't count on that in the Python world.)

Best,
- Joe




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