[Python-Dev] Fwd: Removal of GIL through refcounting removal. (original) (raw)

Adam Olsen rhamph at gmail.com
Sun Nov 2 22:07:45 CET 2008

On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 2:34 PM, Eric Smith <eric at trueblade.com> wrote:

Giovanni Bajo wrote:

[[ my 0.2: it would be a great loss if we lose reference-counting semantic (eg: objects deallocated as soon as they exit the scope). I would bargain that for a noticable speed increase of course, but my own experience with standard GCs from other languages has been less than stellar. ]] And my $0.02: I'd gladly trade deterministic destruction (due to reference counting or any other mechanism) for improved performance. I've often thought of creating a mode where destruction didn't happen right away with reference counting, just so I could find places where I'm relying on it. I consider it a bug to rely on reference counting to close files, for example. Maybe I should just run under Jython or IronPython everyone once in a while.

I've considered making files issue a warning if they've got buffered writes and they're not explicitly closed. Although my feeling is a read-only file should produce the same warning, there's situations where "proper" error handling is very difficult or impossible.

-- Adam Olsen, aka Rhamphoryncus

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