Op Saturday 2 May 2015 22:17 CEST schreef Tim Chase: > [dangit, had Control down when I hit <enter> and it sent > prematurely] > > On 2015-05-02 13:02, vasudevram wrote: >> http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2015/05/can-python-data-structure-reference.html >> >> https://docs.python.org/2/reference/datamodel.html >> >> and saw this excerpt: >> >> [ CPython implementation detail: CPython currently uses a >> reference-counting scheme with (optional) delayed >> detection of cyclically linked garbage, which collects >> most objects as soon as they become unreachable, but is >> not guaranteed to collect garbage containing circular >> references. ] >> >> Not sure whether it is relevant to the topic at hand, >> since, on the one hand, it uses the words "cyclically >> linked", but on the other, it says "garbage collection". > > The gotcha happens in a case where you do something like this: > > lst = [] > lst.append(lst) # create a cycle > del lst > > This creates a cycle, then makes it unreachable, but the list is > still referenced by itself, so the reference count never drops to > zero (where it would get GC'd), and thus that item lingers around in > memory.
Maybe look at Java? If my memory is correct, the JVM gc reclaims those kind of things also. -- Cecil Westerhof Senior Software Engineer LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/cecilwesterhof -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list