[Python-Dev] del and tp_dealloc in the IO lib (original) (raw)

Maciej Fijalkowski fijall at gmail.com
Fri Jan 23 14:28:43 CET 2009

That would be break so much code that I doubt that, in practice, you can slip it through within a release. Besides, being able to write simpler code like "for L in open("foo.txt")" is per-se a good reason not to put file objects in cycles; so you will probably need more than one good reason to change this. OK, not you because of your BDFL powers ;), but anyone else would surely have to face great opposition.

note that this is about writing files, not reading. You would be surprised how much of the software have already taken care to be cross-platform (ie twisted, django, pylons, ...), not to rely on that and be able to run on any other python implementation.

The fact that file objects are collected and closed immediately in all reasonable use cases (and even in case of exceptions, that you mention, things get even better with the new semantic of the except clause) is a good property of Python. I regularly see people happy about it. I miss to understand why many Python developers are so fierce in trying to push the idea of cross-python compatibility (which is something that does simply not exist in real world for applications) or to warn about rainy days in the future when this would stop working in CPython. I would strongly prefer that CPython would settle on (= document) using reference counting and immediate destruction so that people can stop making their everyday code more complex with no benefit. You will be losing no more than an open door that nobody has entered in 20 years, and people would only benefit from it.

someone said at some point "noone will ever need more than 650k of RAM". see what has happened.

Cheers, fijal

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