Re: Garbage collection (was Re: JWZ on s/Java/Perl/)

[Branden]

John Porter wrote:
> James Mastros wrote:
> > I'd think that an extension to delete is in order here.  Basicly, delete
> > should DESTROY the arg, change it's value to undef,...
>
> Huh?  What delete are you thinking of?  This is Perl, not C++.
>

Agreed, definitely Perl is not C++.


> > ...and trigger a GC that will get rid of the arg.
>
> No.  Perl decides for itself when to do GC.
>

Please read the original message I wrote. The reply had only some
off-the-context snippets of the original idea.

The idea is to *allow* a programmer to explicitly destroy an object, for
better (and sooner) resource disposal. The programmer wouldn't have to do it
(and wouldn't do it most the time), but if he knows he uses many resources
and he would like to be nice, he *could* do it (not meaning he would have to
do it either...).

- Branden