David Chase maintains a well-regarded GC FAQ, at
http://www.iecc.com/gclist/GC-faq.html
Interested folks should look it up. A couple highlights:
On cycles with finalizers:
In theory, of course, a cycle in the graph of objects to be finalized
will prevent a topological sort from succeeding. In practice, the
"right" thing to do appears to be to signal an error (at least when
debugging) and let the programmer clean this up. People with experience
on large systems report that such cycles are in fact exceedingly rare
(note, however, that some languages define "finalizers" for almost
every object, and that was not the case for the large systems studied
-- there, finalizers were not too common).
On Java's "finalizer called only once" rule:
if an object is revived in finalization, that is fine, but its
finalizer will not run a second time. (It isn't clear if this is a
matter of design, or merely an accident of the first implementation
of the language, but it is in the specification now. Obviously, this
encourages careful use of finalization, in much the same way that
driving without seatbelts encourages careful driving.)
Until today, I had no idea I was so resolutely conventional <wink>.
seems-we're-trying-to-do-more-than-anyone-other-than-us-expects-ly
y'rs - tim
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