[Python-ideas] python-like garbage collector & workaround

[Greg Ewing]

castironpi-ng at comcast.net wrote:

 > I'm considering a workaround that performs GC in two steps.  First, it
> requests the objects to drop their references that participate in the 
> cycle.  Then, it enqueues the decref'ed object for an unnested
> destruction.

I don't see how that solves anything. The problem is that
the destructors might depend on other objects in the cycle
that have already been deallocated. Deferring the calling
of the destructors doesn't help with that.

The only thing that will help is decoupling the destructor
from the object being destroyed. You can do that now by
storing a weak reference to the object with the destructor
as a callback. But the destructor needs to be designed so
that it can work without holding any reference to the
object being destroyed, since it will no longer exist by
the time the destructor is called.

-- 
Greg