I'm puzzled why explicit bracketing is seen as an acceptable solution. It seems to me that bracketing has the same drawbacks as explicit memory management, namely that it sometimes retains the resource (e.g., memory or file descriptor) longer than necessary (resource leak) and sometimes not long enough (potentially disastrous programmer error). Whether the resource is system RAM, file descriptors, video memory, fonts, brushes, bitmaps, graphics contexts, 3D polygon meshes, or whatever, I'd like GC to track the resource use and free unused resources correctly and efficiently. Cheers, - Conal -----Original Message----- From: haskell-cafe-bounces@haskell.org [mailto:haskell-cafe-bounces@haskell.org] On Behalf Of Tomasz Zielonka Sent: Sunday, October 24, 2004 1:33 AM To: Peter Simons Cc: haskell-cafe@haskell.org Subject: Re: [Haskell-cafe] Are handles garbage-collected? On Sun, Oct 24, 2004 at 01:39:06AM +0200, Peter Simons wrote:
What happens when a System.IO.Handle falls out of scope without being explicitly hClosed? Is that a resource leak? Or will the RTS close the handle for me?
AFAIK, Handles have finalisers which close them, but I don't know if GHC triggers garbage collection when file descriptors run out. If not, you will have problems if you manage to run out of fds between GCs. How about using bracket to introduce explicit close on end of scope? Best regards, Tom -- .signature: Too many levels of symbolic links _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe