GC and finalizers [was: No destructor]

[Vladimir Marangozov]

Paul Duffin wrote:
> 
> The current solution to this of adding cycles which could not be cleaned
> up to a global list does ensure that an application can find those
> objects which could not be cleaned up but what is it supposed to do with
> them ?

The current concensus is that if "it" refers to the collector, it should
give up because no further automatic decision is sane. The collector is
friendly enough in the sense that it publishes the list of these objects
so that the user can see them in the first place. It is assumed that
the code needs to be fixed subsequently so that such "unbreakable" cycles
don't happen. This is a programmer's responsibility.
The collector is best effort, but it's not insane <wink>.

-- 
       Vladimir MARANGOZOV          | Vladimir.Marangozov at inrialpes.fr
http://sirac.inrialpes.fr/~marangoz | tel:(+33-4)76615277 fax:76615252