auto classes and finalizers

[Mike Capp]

In article <e10pk7$2khb$1 at digitaldaemon.com>, Sean Kelly says...
>
>I've been following a thread on GC in c.l.c++.m and something Herb 
>posted about C++/CLI today got me thinking:
>
>     - a type can have a destructor and/or a finalizer
>     - the destructor is called upon a) explicit delete or b) at end 	
>       of scope for auto objects
>     - the finalizer is called if allocated on the gc heap and the
>       destructor has not been called
>[snip]
>Might it not be worthwhile to do something similar to the above?  This 
>would allow objects to explicitly delete all their contained data in 
>instances where they are being used as auto objects, rather than always 
>relying on the GC for this purpose.  I'll admit I don't particularly 
>like the idea of separate finalize() and ~this() methods, but it seems 
>an attractive enough feature that something along these lines may be 
>appropriate.

Personally I'm against it. I feel quite strongly that defining a destructor (or
finalizer) should be illegal for a GC type - it should only be allowed for a
class declared as 'auto'. If you need dtor-like behaviour, you should not be
using GC, and the compiler should tell you so.

I posted this opinion some weeks back in a similar discussion here, expecting to
be chased out of town with pitchforks, but the response was very positive.
Nobody could think of any counterexamples, at any rate.

cheers
Mike