DN631697230

Subject: Itcl improvements - DN [1]

fp@informatik.uni-frankfurt.de (Frank Pilhofer) - 06 Jun 2000 - comp.lang.tcl

    Hi,

  I'd like to rehash a point I made at the beginning of all those [incr
 Tcl] threads that hasn't been discussed so far. The question was, what
 could be improved in [incr Tcl] before being added to the core.

  I said that I'd like to see garbage collection of [incr Tcl] objects,
 just as plain variables (or, speaking on the C level, Tcl_Obj's) are
 garbage collected (note that I'm using garbage collection and refcounting
 synonymously here, but that's not a point here).

  I find it non-intuitive that [incr Tcl] objects need to be released with
 delete object, since other contents of variables are automatically freed.
 Not having to think about allocation issues is a major strength of Tcl,
 and [incr Tcl] objects currently violate it.

  This request is closely related to the addition of hooks for command
 objects in the Tcl core, such as in the Feather extension.

  There might be other things that deserve automatic cleanup, but I'm not
 so sure. The most obvious are widgets, but they are a Tk issue. Not refe-
 rencing an interpreter is useful with threads. Another potential candidate
 are open files, but the close command cannot be dropped, as it is necessary
 for error handling.

     Frank

 --
  + Frank Pilhofer                        fp@informatik.uni-frankfurt.de  +
  |                                      http://www.uni-frankfurt.de/~fp/ |
  +---- Life would be a very great deal less weird without you.  - DA ----+