[Python-Dev] reference counting in Py3K

[Bob Ippolito]

On Sep 6, 2005, at 12:13 PM, Steve Holden wrote:

> Nick Jacobson wrote:
>
>> While we're on the subject of Python 3000, what's the
>> chance that reference counting when calling C
>> functions from Python will go away?
>>
>> To me this is one of the few annoyances I have with
>> Python.  I know that Ruby somehow gets around the need
>> for ref. counting.
>>
>>
> Reference counting is an implementation detail, and isn't a part of  
> the
> language specifications. I have no idea why you find it so  
> annoying, but
> there are other implementations (Jython, Iron Python) that don't  
> use it.

Personally I've found that reference counting makes Python really  
easy to integrate with other systems that may or may not also use  
reference counting.  It is somewhat of a chore to incref/decref all  
over the place, but you *are* programming in C.

-bob