auto classes and finalizers

[Bruno Medeiros]

Don Clugston wrote:
> kris wrote:
>> Mike Capp wrote:
>>> In article <e1cq0t$1fm5$1 at digitaldaemon.com>, kris says...
>>>
>>>> I thought the idea was that classes with dtors are /intended/ to be 
>>>> explicitly cleaned up? That, implicit cleanup of resources (manana, 
>>>> some time) was actually a negative aspect? At least, that's what 
>>>> Mike was suggesting, and it seemed like a really good idea.
>>>
>>>
>>> Um... can we avoid using "implicit" and "explicit" in this context? 
>>> "Implicit"
>>> to me means "without writing any code", which covers both RAII and GC 
>>> cleanup
>>> (if you're lucky). "Explicit" to me means manual calls to dtors or 
>>> dispose(),
>>> which is the worst of all possible approaches.
>>
>> Yeah, I see the murk. What would you prefer to call them? The 
>> distinction being made there was whether the dtor was initiated via 
>> delete/auto, versus normal collection by the GC (where the latter was 
>> referred to as implicit).
> 
> deterministic and non-deterministic.

I don't like those terms. Although they are not false (because 
*currently* explicit destruction is deterministic, and implicit 
destruction in non-deterministic), the fact of whether the destructor 
was called deterministically or non-deterministically is not in itself 
relevant to this issue. What is relevant is the state of the object to 
be destroyed (in defined or undefined state).
Nor is implicit destruction/collection inherently non-deterministic and 
vice-versa.  (even if systems that operated this way would be unpractical)

So far, I'm keeping the terms "implicit" and "explicit", as they seems 
adequate to me and I don't find at all that RAII collection is 
"implicit" or "without writing any code".

-- 
Bruno Medeiros - CS/E student
http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?BrunoMedeiros#D