RFC: Proposal: Deterministic Object Destruction

[Ooomzay]

On Monday, 5 March 2018 11:24:37 UTC, Chris Angelico  wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 5, 2018 at 10:09 PM, Ooomzay wrote:
> > Here is an example of a composite resource using RAII:-
> >
> > class RAIIFileAccess():
> >     def __init__(self, fname):
> >         print("%s Opened" % fname)
> >     def __del__(self):
> >         print("%s Closed" % fname)
> >
> > class A():
> >     def __init__(self):
> >         self.res = RAIIFileAccess("a")
> >
> > class B():
> >     def __init__(self):
> >         self.res = RAIIFileAccess("b")
> >
> > class C():
> >     def __init__(self):
> >         self.a = A()
> >         self.b = B()
> >
> > def main():
> >     c = C()
> >
> > Under this PEP this is all that is needed to guarantee that the files "a"
> > and "b" are closed on exit from main or after any exception has been handled.
> 
> Okay. And all your PEP needs is for reference count semantics, right?
> Okay. I'm going to run this in CPython, with reference semantics. You
> guarantee that those files will be closed after an exception is
> handled? Right.
> 
> >>> def main():
> ...     c = C()
> ...     c.do_stuff()
> ...
> >>> main()
> a Opened
> b Opened
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
>   File "<stdin>", line 3, in main
> AttributeError: 'C' object has no attribute 'do_stuff'
> >>>
>  
> Uhh.... I'm not seeing any messages about the files getting closed.

Then that is indeed a challenge. From CPython back in 2.6 days up to Python36-32 what I see is:-

a Opened
b Opened
Traceback (most recent call last):
...
AttributeError: 'C' object has no attribute 'dostuff'
a Closed
b Closed

> Maybe exceptions aren't as easy to handle as you think? 

Well there is a general issue with exceptions owing to the ease
with which one can create cycles that may catch out newbs. But
that is not the case here.

> Or maybe you
> just haven't tried any of this (which is obvious from the bug in your
> code 

Or maybe I just made a typo when simplifying my test case and failed to retest?

Here is my fixed case, if someone else could try it in CPython and report back that would be interesting:-

class RAIIFileAccess():
    def __init__(self, fname):
        print("%s Opened" % fname)
        self.fname = fname

    def __del__(self):
        print("%s Closed" % self.fname)

class A():
    def __init__(self):
        self.res = RAIIFileAccess("a")

class B():
    def __init__(self):
        self.res = RAIIFileAccess("b")

class C():
    def __init__(self):
        self.a = A()
        self.b = B()

def main():
    c = C()
    c.dostuff()

main()

> You keep insisting that this is an easy thing.  > We keep pointing out
> that it isn't. Now you're proving that you haven't even attempted any
> of this. 

Nonsense. But you have got a result I have never seen in many years 
and I would like to get to the  bottom of it.