[Python-Dev] Quick-and-dirty weak references

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Jack Jansen wrote:
> 
> The one thing I'm not thrilled by in mxProxy is that a call to
> CheckWeakReferences() is needed before an object is cleaned up. I guess this
> boils down to the same problem I had with my weak reference scheme: you
> somehow want the Python core to tell the proxy stuff that the object can be
> cleaned up (although the details are different: in my scheme this would be
> triggered by refcount==0 and in mxProxy by refcount==1). And because objects
> are created and destroyed in Python at a tremendous rate you don't want to do
> this call for every object, only if you have a hint that the object has a weak
> reference (or a proxy).

Well, the check is done prior to every action using a proxy to
the object and also when a proxy to it is deallocated. The
addition checkweakrefs() API is only included to enable additional explicit
checking of the whole weak refs dictionary, e.g. every 10 seconds
or so (just like you would with a mark&sweep GC).

But yes, GC of the phantom object is delayed a bit depending on
how you set up the proxies. Still, I think most usages won't have
this problem, since the proxies themselves are usually 
temporary objects.

It may sometimes even make sense to have the phantom object
around as long as possible, e.g. to implement the soft references
Tim quoted from the Java paper.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
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