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

Guido van Rossum guido at python.org
Fri Jan 23 16:27:32 CET 2009

On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 2:57 AM, Giovanni Bajo <rasky at develer.com> wrote:

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.

You are so very wrong, my son. CPython's implementation strategy will evolve. Several groups are hard at work trying to make a faster Python interpreter, and when they succeed, everyone, including you, will want to use their version (or their version may simply be the new CPython).

Plus, you'd be surprised how many people might want to port existing code (and that may include code that uses C extensions, many of which are also ported) to Jython or IronPython.

Your mistake sounds more like "nobody will ever want to run this on Windows, so I won't have to use the os.path module" and other short-sighted ideas. While you may be right in the short run, it may also be the death penalty for a piece of genius code that is found to be unportable.

And, by the way, "for line in open(filename): ..." will continue to work. It may just not close the file right away. This is a forgivable sin in a small program that opens a few files only. It only becomes a program when this is itself inside a loop that loops over many filenames -- you could run out of file descriptors.

-- --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

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