Subject: Re: conservative gc sucks
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Date: 14 Jan 2003 21:12:33 +0000
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3251567553621728@naggum.no>

* Andy Freeman
| That data operations using valid handles are unaffected by unlink.

  If you want to rely on this, do you still want the stream to be
  closed when it is garbage collected, or do you want some control
  over when it ceases to exist?

  I guess I am trying to figure out why you brought this up in the
  context of garbage-collected streams with finalization semantics.

  Also, despite what you believe, this is not the only mechanism.
  The standard language semantics prevails.  Someone wanted to be
  relieved of closing streams "manually" and wanted them to be closed
  when they became unreferenced.  Again despite what you believe I
  said, I have offered three different ways to address this problem.
  (One of them automatic reaping of unreferenced file handles.)  How
  you could possibly have invented the premise that one of these
  three would be the only one available is beyond me.

-- 
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway

Act from reason, and failure makes you rethink and study harder.
Act from faith, and failure makes you blame someone and push harder.