On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 12:44 PM, Richard Oudkerk <shibturn@gmail.com> wrote:
I would like to see better support for the use of weakrefs callbacks for object finalization.
The current issues with weakref callbacks include:
1. They are rather low level, and working out how to use them correctly requires a bit of head scratching. One must find somewhere to store the weakref till after the referent is dead, and without accidentally keeping the referent alive. Then one must ensure that the callback frees the weakref (without leaving any remnant ref-cycles).
When it is an option, using a __del__ method is far less hassle.
2. Callbacks invoked during interpreter shutdown are troublesome. For instance they can throw exceptions because module globals have been replaced by None.
3. Sometimes you want the callback to be called at program exit even if the referent is still alive.
4. Exceptions thrown in callbacks do not produce a traceback. This can make debugging rather awkward. (Maybe this is because printing tracebacks is problematic during interpreter shutdown?)
(Note that problems 2-4 also apply to using __del__ methods.)
If possible I would like to see the weakref module provide a finalize class to address these issues. Trivial usage might be
>>> class Kenny: pass ... >>> kenny = Kenny() >>> finalize(kenny, print, "you killed kenny!") <finalize.finalize object at 0xffed4f2c> >>> del kenny you killed kenny!
Prototype at https://gist.github.com/3208245
I like how simple it is, but it might be too simple. That is, shouldn't we have a way to unregister the callback?
Cheers,
Richard
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