[gclist] Timeliness of finalization

[Stefan Monnier]

stuart <stuart@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> (yeates) writes:
> the OS shutting down or crashing. If we are relying on finalisation 
> to ensure closure of files/consistency of disks, to maintain contracts 
> in a distributed environment or similar we still need to have our finalisers
> invoked if at all possible.

It's nothing terribly new, I'd say: on typical unix systems, this
"finalization" is done by fsck which is nothing else than a GC. The only
difference is that on unix, the GC is only used in special situation rather
than being the rule (with obvious side effects like "hard links to directories
disallowed" and such). Why couldn't the very same techniques be used ?


        Stefan