From: Charles Hixson <charleshixsn@...>
Date: 2004-09-09T16:38:07+09:00
Subject: Problem with ensuring consistency .. Finalization??

I want to have a class which occasionally updates a file, but I want to 
ensure that it always flushes it's data to the file before the program 
quits.

The class is called Words

What's the best approach to take here?  I could just continually run a 
flush cycle, but that seems an awful waste of resources, I'd rather 
batch the updates, and only flush occasionally.


class    Words

   def    initialize    ()
      @@words    =    Hash.new
      @@words.default    =    nil
      @@wtable    =    WordTable.instance      #<<<=================
      @@maxWord    =    @@wtable.maxWord
   end    #    initialize
....
end   #   Words

WordTable is a singleton class, and it's the one that does the actual 
writing, but it needs to get the data to do the updates from Words.

I'm considering:
    def initialize ()
         ...
         ObjectSpace.define_finalizer(@@words, proc { flush })

But I don't know how to evaluate whether it's a good idea or not...or 
even how to tell afterwards (presuming it doesn't throw a "compile-time" 
error).