Question about garbage collection

Aahz Maruch aahz at netcom.com
Wed Aug 2 15:07:32 EDT 2000


In article <u4_h5.41489$B33.109205 at dfw-read.news.verio.net>,
Martin Bertolino <martinb at talx.com.no.spam> wrote:
>
>I was looking at the C source for the Pyhon intepreter and I have noticed
>that it uses a reference counting mechanism for it garbage collection
>scheme. I like the simplicity of this scheme, but I know it has problems
>with data structures that have references to themselves, no being properly
>collected and eventually leaked.
>
>In real/average/day to day development of applications in Python, how often
>does this becomes a problem?, and how do you code around it, if possible?

It depends who you talk to.  ;-)  My company hasn't found it much of a
problem.  You code around it by explicitly breaking any cycles you
create (deleting the reference), rather than relying on scoping to reap
it for you.
--
                      --- Aahz (Copyright 2000 by aahz at pobox.com)

Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het    <*>     http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6

NOTE: end of September, Earthlink kills Netcom.  My new permanent address is 
aahz at pobox.com.  I have not decided where to set my primary shell account.
Please do not send me e-mail condolences; my mailbox is already too big.



More information about the Python-list mailing list