Destructors vs. Finalizers

[Steven Schveighoffer via Digitalmars-d]

On 7/26/17 2:33 PM, Moritz Maxeiner wrote:
> On Wednesday, 26 July 2017 at 17:38:28 UTC, Dgame wrote:
>> I don't get it. The GC collects the objects which aren't in use 
>> anymore. The order in which this is currently happening is not 
>> specified. So, how are the destructors supposed to be called in the 
>> right order? Manually? ARC?
> 
> After the split:
> Destructors are only for deterministic end of object lifetime, so yes, 
> they are to be called by any scheme (such as manual management via 
> destroy and reference counting - which is likely also implemented as 
> calling destroy) that is deterministic.
> Finalizers are for nondeterministic schemes such as the GC.
> The GC *never* calls destructors directly, only finalizers.
> A finalizer might manually call a destructor, but a destructor may never 
> call a finalizer.

Actually, it's the opposite. A finalizer can never call anything on its 
members because it doesn't know if it's being destroyed by the GC.

The destructor is ensured that the entire structure is intact, so it can 
do whatever it wants.

-Steve