RFC: Proposal: Deterministic Object Destruction

[Ooomzay]

On Monday, 5 March 2018 15:17:13 UTC, bartc  wrote:
> On 05/03/2018 13:58, Ooomzay wrote:
> > On Monday, 5 March 2018 11:24:37 UTC, Chris Angelico  wrote:
> >> On Mon, Mar 5, 2018 at 10:09 PM, Ooomzay wrote:
> >>> Here is an example of a composite resource using RAII:-
> >>>
> >>> class RAIIFileAccess():
> >>>      def __init__(self, fname):
> >>>          print("%s Opened" % fname)
> >>>      def __del__(self):
> >>>          print("%s Closed" % fname)
> >>>
> >>> class A():
> >>>      def __init__(self):
> >>>          self.res = RAIIFileAccess("a")
> >>>
> >>> class B():
> >>>      def __init__(self):
> >>>          self.res = RAIIFileAccess("b")
> >>>
> >>> class C():
> >>>      def __init__(self):
> >>>          self.a = A()
> >>>          self.b = B()
> >>>
> >>> def main():
> >>>      c = C()
> >>>
> >>> Under this PEP this is all that is needed to guarantee that the files "a"
> >>> and "b" are closed on exit from main or after any exception has been handled.
> >>
> >> Okay. And all your PEP needs is for reference count semantics, right?
> >> Okay. I'm going to run this in CPython, with reference semantics. You
> >> guarantee that those files will be closed after an exception is
> >> handled? Right.
> >>
> >>>>> def main():
> >> ...     c = C()
> >> ...     c.do_stuff()
> >> ...
> >>>>> main()
> >> a Opened
> >> b Opened
> >> Traceback (most recent call last):
> >>    File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
> >>    File "<stdin>", line 3, in main
> >> AttributeError: 'C' object has no attribute 'do_stuff'
> >>>>>
> >>   
> >> Uhh.... I'm not seeing any messages about the files getting closed.
> > 
> > Then that is indeed a challenge. From CPython back in 2.6 days up to Python36-32 what I see is:-
> > 
> > a Opened
> > b Opened
> > Traceback (most recent call last):
> > ...
> > AttributeError: 'C' object has no attribute 'dostuff'
> > a Closed
> > b Closed
> > 
> >> Maybe exceptions aren't as easy to handle as you think?
> > 
> > Well there is a general issue with exceptions owing to the ease
> > with which one can create cycles that may catch out newbs. But
> > that is not the case here.
> > 
> >> Or maybe you
> >> just haven't tried any of this (which is obvious from the bug in your
> >> code
> > 
> > Or maybe I just made a typo when simplifying my test case and failed to retest?
> > 
> > Here is my fixed case, if someone else could try it in CPython and report back that would be interesting:-
> > 
> > class RAIIFileAccess():
> >      def __init__(self, fname):
> >          print("%s Opened" % fname)
> >          self.fname = fname
> > 
> >      def __del__(self):
> >          print("%s Closed" % self.fname)
> > 
> > class A():
> >      def __init__(self):
> >          self.res = RAIIFileAccess("a")
> > 
> > class B():
> >      def __init__(self):
> >          self.res = RAIIFileAccess("b")
> > 
> > class C():
> >      def __init__(self):
> >          self.a = A()
> >          self.b = B()
> > 
> > def main():
> >      c = C()
> >      c.dostuff()
> > 
> > main()
> 
> I get A and B closed messages when running on CPython 2.7 and 3.6, with 
> the code run from a .py file. (I never use interactive mode.)
> 
> But not when running on a PyPy version of 2.7 (however that is not CPython).

Thanks bartc, I have made the example more complete by adding an exception scope - this means it works as designed - in any context. See my reply to Chris.

We do not expect this to work in PyPy.