[Python-Dev] __del__ and tp_dealloc in the IO lib

[Gregory P. Smith]

+1 on getting rid of the IOBase __del__ in the C rewrite in favor of
tp_dealloc.

On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 11:53 PM, Christian Heimes <lists at cheimes.de> wrote:

> Brett Cannon schrieb:
> > Fine by me. People should be using the context manager for guaranteed
> > file closure anyway IMO.
>

Yes they should.  (how I really really wish i didn't have to use 2.4 anymore
;)

But lets at least be clear that is never acceptable for a python
implementation to leak file descriptors/handles (or other system resources),
they should be closed and released whenever the particular GC implementation
gets around to it.


>
> You make a very good point! Perhaps we should stop promising that files
> get closed as soon as possible and encourage people in using the with
> statement.
>
> Christian
>

eegads, do we actually -promise- that somewhere?  If so I'll happily go
update those docs with a caveat.

I regularly point out in code reviews that the very convenient and common
idiom of open(name, 'w').write(data) doesn't guarantee when the file will be
closed; its up to the GC implementation details.  Good code should never
depend on the GC for a timely release of scarce external resources (file
descriptors/handles).
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