Ethan Furman wrote:
I'd like to make a slight doc change for weakref to state (more or less):
What specific part of the docs are you planning to change?
My guess is that you want to change this start of the third paragraph:
http://docs.python.org/py3k/library/weakref.html
[quote]
A weak reference to an object is not enough to keep the object alive: when the
only remaining references to a referent are weak references, garbage
collection is free to destroy the referent and reuse its memory for something
else.
[end quote]
I don't think that should be changed. It makes no promises except that weak
refs won't keep an object alive. Everything else is an implementation detail,
as it should be.
weakrefs are not invalidated when the strong refs
are gone, but rather when garbage collection
reclaims the object
I think you're making a distinction here that we should not make. Reference
counting *is* a garbage collector (even if gc-bigots like to sneer at ref
counting as "not a real gc"), and implementations with such a ref counting gc
will not always distinguish the two states "strong refs are gone" and "object
is reclaimed".
I don't believe that we need to make promises about the exact timing of when
weak refs will be invalidated.
Should this be accurate for all implementations, or should it be more
along the lines of:
weakrefs may be invalidated as soon as the strong refs
are gone, but may last until garbage collection reclaims
the object
This is better than the previous suggestion, since it says "may" rather than
implies a "will".
--
Steven
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