From: matz@... (Yukihiro Matsumoto)
Date: 2002-07-04T01:38:39+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby implementation Q's

Hi,

In message "Re: Ruby implementation Q's"
    on 02/07/03, "Justin Johnson" <justinj@mobiusent.com> writes:

|a.destroy
|    Action: 'unitialize' method is called for 'a'. 'a' is removed from local
|variable hash. 'a' no longer exists as a variable.
|
|Any ptr's that used to reference to 'a' are set to Nil.  This can be done as
|the runtime comes across ptr's to dead objects.  This means that 'destroy'
|could be implemented as a method - it wouldn't be possible to make 'a' live
|again after 'destroy'.

I agree it is interesting.  But you will not see it in (my) Ruby in
the near future.  I have to consider it more deeply, since I have
some concerns about implementation / language impact of the idea.

By the way, it's not usually called "finalization" in GC languages.

							matz.