Aaron Brady wrote: > My point is, that garbage collection is able to detect when there are > no program-reachable references to an object. Why not notify the > programmer (the programmer's objects) when that happens? If the > object does still have other unreachable references, s/he should be > informed of that too.
i think we're mixing python-specific and more general / java details, but, as far as i understand things, state of the art (and particularly generational) garbage collectors don't guarantee that objects will ever be reclaimed. this is a trade for efficiency, and it's a trade that seems to be worthwhile and popular. furthermore, you're mixing responsibilities for two logically separate ideas just because a particular implementation happens to associate them, which is not a good idea from a design pov. i can remember, way back in the mists of time, using java finalizers for doing this kind of thing. and then learning that it was a bad idea. once i got over the initial frustration, it really hasn't been a problem. i haven't met a situation where i needed to tie resource management and memory management together (except for interfacing with c code that does not use the host language's gc - and i can imagine that for python this is a very strong (perhaps *the*) argument for reference counting). as an bonus example, consider object caching - a very common technique that immediately breaks anything that associates other resources with memory use. just because, in one limited case, you can do something, doesn't mean it's a good idea. andrew -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
