Reference counting garbage collection

[Brian Quinlan]

 Paul Rubin wrote:
> I guess that might be the case, at least with the current body of
> Python programs.  I'm thinking of Python's implementation in terms of
> whether it's suitable for large, long-running programs, and it's
> not clear whether anyone really writes those in Python.

Huh? It seems like the deterministic behavior of reference counting
would be of benefit to large, long-running programs. Or are you thinking
of large, long-running programs that create a lot of cyclic references?

> The combination of RC and GC (or cycle breaking) that's been described
> here sounds like a pretty good approach.  It wasn't described in the
> Python docs that I read, which described a pure RC system, but that's
> ok :).

Cyclic memory collection is a build option and, if enabled at build
time, it can still be disabled using the gc module.