Should destructors be able to tell who called them?

[Lutger]

Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

> On Tue, 10 Aug 2010 15:08:30 -0400, Lutger <lutger.blijdestijn at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>> ...
>>> This would make destructors a lot more useful.  Thoughts?
>>>
>>> -Steve
>>
>> My first thought was that they are actually two separate functions
>> distinguished
>> by a boolean, then Michel also mentioned the SafeD argument.
>>
>> atm I think it is better to let go of the destructor entirely for
>> anything else
>> than the GC collecting non-gc owned data as we now have. (the unsafe
>> version,
>> not compilable in SafeD). Rather provide a standard interface to
>> implement and
>> base deterministic release of resources on that. A much more simple
>> version of
>> IDisposable. clear() can call this one and leave ~this alone.
> 
> Hm... something I just thought of that makes this bad, destructors are
> special in that they automatically call base destructors.  You can't do
> that with a simple function.
> 
> But it could be done the way you say (with the caveat that you have to
> manually call the base method).  I think clear should call ~this() in
> addition to the dispose method because you don't want to have to duplicate
> code.
> 
> -Steve

clear could check if the base classes implement the interface and act on that. 
It already does the same for destructors.