[Python-Dev] Linus on garbage collection

[Greg Ewing]

Neal Becker wrote:
> http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2002-08/msg00552.html

There, Linus says

> For example, if you have an _explicit_ refcounting system, then it is
> quite natural to have operations like ...
> 
> 		note_t *node = *np;
> 		if (node->count > 1)
> 			newnode = copy_alloc(node);

It's interesting to note that, even though you *can* get reference
count information in CPython, it's not all that useful for doing
things like that, because it's hard to be sure how many incidental
references have been created on the way to the code concerned.
So tricks like this at the Python level aren't really feasible in
any robust way.

-- 
Greg