Re: GC and file descriptors (and external resources.in general, I guess)

[Jim Blandy]

> currently, if a call to `open' or `opendir' fails, Guile throws an
> error.
> 
> what it *should* do, IMHO, is try to GC first, since it is likely to
> free some file descriptors.
> 
> so, well, is there any reason why this isn't done?  if there's no good 
> reason, I'll add this functionality.

I'm uncomfortable making the "error" behavior so much more expensive
than the normal behavior.  Whether errors are common or not depends on
the application.

If you could arrange to GC *only* when the system call fails because
the Guile process has run out of file descriptors, that would be
better.  I can't imagine that error possibly occuring frequently as
part of an application's healthy behavior.