Re: heads up (was: Re: Making guardians a module?)

[Dirk Herrmann]

On 29 Dec 2000, Michael Livshin wrote:

> > Can one really be sure that a directly (but not indirectly)
> > self-referencing object is safe to finalize?
> 
> yes, one thinks one can. ;)
> 
> the guardian's job is to say: here, this object is not referenced by
> anything anymore.  it's the caller's job to handle any self-cycles
> (or, in fact, any other semantic peculiarities) of the object.

Yes, I finally got it.  You are perfectly right.

> > Thus, I'd vote for just kicking those sharing guardians out, until
> > there is a real use for them.  Otherwise we suddenly end up with the
> > big 'backwards compatibility' problem if we once decide to drop them
> > from the library :-(
> 
> they are not such a bear to support, actually.  I hate to kick things
> out when there's any possibility of them being useful to somebody.

I prefer to throw things out unless there's prove that something is
useful.  Small is beautiful :-)

Best regards,
Dirk Herrmann