Exceptions and Object Destruction (was: Problem with apsw and garbage collection)

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:52:30 +1200, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> In message <pan.2009.06.16.07.34.34 at REMOVE.THIS.cybersource.com.au>,
> Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> 
>> On Tue, 16 Jun 2009 16:45:43 +1200, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>> 
>>> In message <m2eitowaf2.fsf at cs.uu.nl>, Piet van Oostrum wrote:
>>> 
>>>> The exact time of the destruction of objects is an implementation
>>>> detail and should not be relied upon.
>>> 
>>> That may be true in Java and other corporate-herd-oriented languages,
>>> but we know that dynamic languages like Perl and Python make heavy use
>>> of reference-counting wherever they can. If it's easy to satisfy
>>> yourself that the lifetime of an object will be delimited in this way,
>>> I don't see why you can't rely upon it.
>> 
>> Reference counting is an implementation detail used by CPython but not
>> [implementations built on runtimes designed for corporate-herd-oriented
>> languages, like] IronPython or Jython.
> 
> I rest my case.

CLPython and Unladen Swallow do not use reference counting. I suppose you 
might successfully argue that Lisp is a corporate-herd-oriented language, 
and that Google (the company behind Unladen Swallow) is a corporate-herd. 
But PyPy doesn't use reference counting either. Perhaps you think that 
Python is a language designed for corporate-herds too?



-- 
Steven