Re: C bug of the day

[kanze@gabi-soft.fr]

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Wesley Groleau <wesgroleau@despammed.com> wrote in message
news:<ZwSdnYSE3NcO13KjXTWJig@gbronline.com>...
> > and not necessarily easier. Garbage collection might make it harder
> > to manage resources, not easier.

> It also makes it easier to not think about it, and continue not
> thinking about it until you find out the hard way in some case that
> you should have thought about it.

That's true for just about any tool that makes programming easier:-).

Garbage collection is a tool.  It makes life simpler, and safer, for the
programmer.  You might say that garbage collection is to memory
management what a high level language is to coding.  Neither free you
from having to consider the issues at the design stage, but once your
design is clean, and the issues addressed, the implementation is
significantly easier to get right with the modern tool.

> > Besides, memory is just one kind of resource, and GC does nothing
> > for other kinds. ....

> Like: closing files, decrementing usage counts,
> flushing file buffers and cached data,
> commiting or cancelling database transactions, ...

There is a major difference between these "resources" and memory.  They
generally can't (or shouldn't) be deferred.  The act of "freeing" the
resource has side effects which are pertinent to the observable behavior
of the program.

> That's what's nice about Ada controlled types. You can use them for
> anything with mandatory finalization, not just GC. I suppose C++
> destructors could do the same.

I don't know about controlled types, so I can't say, but it sounds like
it.  Is the finalization called at a defined moment?

--
James Kanze             GABI Software             mailto:kanze@gabi-soft.fr
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