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

[Hans Boehm]

Charles writes:

"The world of operating systems is MSDOS and debris."

I don't think that's an accurate assessment of where development effort is
concentrated.  Win32 is not MSDOS, though it may share this problem.  And my
impression is that various UNIX platforms are significant when it comes to
development effort, though they're not a very common office platform.

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

Unless you build a better abstraction on top of MSDOS file handles.  Depending
on the context, you may be able to provide your own handles, the most
frequently used of which have an associated open MSDOS file handle.

Hans