From: "Avdi B. Grimm" <avdi@...>
Date: 2001-10-24T09:03:44+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:23125] Re: Bruce Eckel's opinion of Ruby

On Tue, 2001-10-23 at 19:27, Michael Neumann wrote:
> Avdi B. Grimm wrote:
> > > Using this there is no need for destructors.
> > 
> > I have to disagree with this statement.  There *are* cases where the
> > block paradigm is simply not appropriate, and destructors are.
> > Sometimes it's possible to kludge in a solution using the block
> > paradigm; but it's not pretty.  It's not a terribly rare occurance to
> > have objects which (a) /must/ release resources before being
> > garbage-collected, and (b) have non-determinate lifetimes. 
> 
> True. You cannot do everything with blocks. 
> In Ruby you have class ObjectSpace that lets you define finalizer
> methods. This is not very nice, but it works.

I would go so far as to say it doesn't work at all, unless I completely
failed to understand it.  Once the ObjectSpace-defined constructor kicks
in, the object is *already gone*.  All the destructor gets is (IIRC) the
ID of the object.  I haven't yet figured out how this can be used to
free resources that only the now-deceased object posessed the keys to.
Perhaps one has to maintain some sort of global ID/Resource map, and the
destructor has to look up the resources to free via the ID...?  Pardon
me but, yeeeecchhhhh!  That's just horrid.

~Avdi