[gclist] Finalizer flame wars. The real source of the disagreement.

[Charles Fiterman]

> I must admit, however, that when the resource in question is fairly
> limited or fairly expensive (like the file handle case), using a
> finalizer that gets run who-knows-when is a questionable practise.  We
> might have millions or billions of memory cells, but we probably only
> have hundreds or thousands of file handles.

I'm dealing with operating systems where you have twenty file handles
count um twenty per program and maybe 50 for the system. This may be the
source of these basic disagrements.

Issac Azmov described the solar system as the Sun Jupiter and debris.
The world of operating systems is MSDOS and debris. Since I like to
eat I program mostly for MSDOS (Windows runs under MSDOS or keeps
its conventions with Windows 95).

So when you have 20 file handles using slow and unsure finalizers to
close files is not acceptable.