[Python-3000] socket GC worries

[Greg Ewing]

Guido van Rossum wrote:

> That's because I don't find the synonyms a good idea.

Even if it means that stream sockets then have the
same interface as all other stream-like objects in
the I/O system, so buffering layers can be used on
them, etc.? That seems like a rather good reason to
me.

If you want to be pedantic about not having synonyms,
then fix send() and recv() so that they only work
on *non*-stream sockets, or have different classes
for stream and non-stream sockets.

In other words, to my mind, for stream sockets it's
send and recv that are synonyms for read and write,
not the other way around.

> On Windows you can't dup() a fd.

Oh, blarg. Forget that part, then.

But I still think it shouldn't be necessary to share
fds between different objects in the first place.

This is the problem that would be solved by making
sockets have an interface that is directly usable by
higher layers of the I/O system. There would be no
need to reach down below the socket object and grab
its fd, so the socket would have complete ownership
of it, and it would get closed when the socket
object eventually went away. This would happen at
the C level, so cycles and __del__ methods wouldn't
be a serious problem.

--
Greg