[Python-3000] Delayed reference counting idea

[Greg Ewing]

Ronald Oussoren wrote:

> I'd be more worried about changes in semantics, it's pretty  convenient 
> to write 'open(somefile, 'r').read()' to read a file in  bulk, currently 
> this will immediately close the file but with a GC  system it may be a 
> long time before the file is actually closed.

Another data point in favour of deterministic memory
management: I was working on a game recently involving
OpenGL and animation, and I found that I couldn't get
a smooth frame rate until I disabled cyclic GC, after
which everything was fine.

So I'd be unhappy if refcounting were removed and not
replaced with something equally unobtrusive in the case
where you don't create a lot of cycles.

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, +--------------------------------------+
University of Canterbury,	   | Carpe post meridiem!          	  |
Christchurch, New Zealand	   | (I'm not a morning person.)          |
greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz	   +--------------------------------------+