Why no open(f, "w").write()?

[Paul Foley]

On Fri, 31 May 2002 22:55:04 +1200, John La Rooy wrote:

>> Well, as one of the credos of Python is that explicit is better than
>> implicit, why are we relying on the implicit nature of file objects to close
>> themselves? It's not nearly as easy to read.

> Do you explicitly del all your objects too, or wait for them to disappear when they go out of scope?

Neither.  You can't delete objects in Python ("del" doesn't do
anything to objects; it does something to variables), and in theory
they persist forever; GC is just an optimization to allow reuse of
memory used by objects that the program will never access again,
because you don't really have infinite memory.

Correct optimizations don't change the behaviour of correct code.

[Therefore, if the behaviour of your code does change depending on
whether or not the optimization is done, either the optimization is
in error or your code is.  Thus, relying on GC to close files (or do
anything else) is Wrong.  Python really ought to print a warning when
it GCs an open file]

-- 
You don't have to agree with me; you can be wrong if you want.

(setq reply-to
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