Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!kddlab!titcca!sragwa!wsgw!socslgw!diamond!diamond From: diamond@diamond.csl.sony.junet (Norman Diamond) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++ Subject: Re: Eiffel vs. C++ -- Let's drop the garbage collection arguments Message-ID: <10437@socslgw.csl.sony.JUNET> Date: 26 Jun 89 09:04:10 GMT References: <6590166@hplsla.HP.COM> <9522@alice.UUCP> Sender: news@csl.sony.JUNET Reply-To: diamond@csl.sony.junet (Norman Diamond) Organization: Sony Computer Science Laboratory Inc., Tokyo, Japan Lines: 19 In article <9522@alice.UUCP> bs@alice.UUCP (c++.God) writes: >There is an important question that needs to be asked in regards to GC >of C++ programs: > ``When an object is garbage collected should its destructor > (if any) be called?'' Perhaps an alternative destructor should be called. Perhaps its name could be !classname(). The reason for an alternative destructor is that the user might not have expected "leaks" but wishes to be prepared to do debugging. If a user expects garbage collection as normal for a class, then !classname() might invoke ~classname(), uh, er, or they might both invoke the same "helper" routine. -- Norman Diamond, Sony Computer Science Lab (diamond%csl.sony.jp@relay.cs.net) The above opinions are claimed by your machine's init process (pid 1), after being disowned and orphaned. However, if you see this at Waterloo, Stanford, or Anterior, then their administrators must have approved of these opinions.