From: Daniel Schierbeck <daniel.schierbeck@...>
Date: 2005-11-25T22:17:27+09:00
Subject: `finalize' method?

Yeah, it's me again, your friendly neighbourhood power-suggester!

I'm wondering why there isn't a `finalize' method classes can define, 
that will be called immediately before instances of that class are 
garbage collected? I'm aware of ObjectSpace.define_finalizer, but it 
seems un-OO, and it doesn't seem to work when being called from within 
the instance methods. It also seems as if the Proc sent to 
`define_finalizer' isn't called until *after* the object has been destroyed.

   class Klass
     def finalize
       # finalize something
     end
   end

A use case (the best I can come up with at the moment):

   class Contact
     def initialize(filename)
       @filename = filename
       parse_xml_file(@filename)
     end

     def finalize
       save_as_xml(@filename)
     end
   end


Cheers,
Daniel