when should I explicitly close a file?

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

In message <mailman.2162.1272018097.23598.python-list at python.org>, Adam 
Tauno Williams wrote:

> On Fri, 2010-04-23 at 16:29 +1200, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
>> Any implementation that doesn’t do reference-counting is brain-damaged.
> 
> Why?

Because a) it uses extra memory needlessly, and b) waiting until an object 
has dropped out of cache before touching it again just slows things down.

> There are much better ways to do memory management / garbage
> collection;  especially when dealing with large applications.

Especially with large applications, the above considerations apply even more 
so.

If you don’t agree, you might as well stick to Java.