[Python-Dev] finalization again (original) (raw)

Moshe Zadka Moshe Zadka mzadka@geocities.com
Sat, 11 Mar 2000 22:35:43 +0200 (IST)

In a continuation (yes, a dangerous word in these parts) of the timbot's looks at the way other languages handle finalization, let me add something from the Sather manual I'm now reading (when I'm done with it, you'll see me begging for iterators here, and having some weird ideas in the types-sig):

=============================== Finalization will only occur once, even if new references are created to the object during finalization. Because few guarantees can be made about the environment in which finalization occurs, finalization is considered dangerous and should only be used in the rare cases that conventional coding will not suffice.

(Sather is garbage-collected, BTW)

Moshe Zadka <mzadka@geocities.com>. http://www.oreilly.com/news/prescod_0300.html