garbage collection / cyclic references

[andrew cooke]

Aaron Brady wrote:
[...]
> caveats and fragilities?  If free software can do it, why isn't it all
> over the industry?  What disqualifies it from solved-problem status?

the two dominant virtual machines - .net and the jvm both handle circular
references with no problem whatever.  this is standard in modern garbage
collection - go read a book on the subject (personally i like grune et
al's modern compiler design).  it *is* a solved problem.  if anything,
python is behind the curve, not ahead of it, but this may change with the
next generation of python implementations (pypy targets a variety of vms,
i think).

as for the extra methods you suggest - why do you want to expose
implementation details in an api?  that is not the normal aim of good
design.

andrew