[plt-scheme] Re: [plt-edu] Re: animation projects, video-game and not

On Sat, Feb 7, 2009 at 2:58 PM, YC <yinso.chen at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 7, 2009 at 11:50 AM, Carl Eastlund <carl.eastlund at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> > I am probably missing the point here, but I think GC doesn't help with
>> > closing file handles or database connections (at least *safely*), no?
>> >
>> > Thanks,
>> > yc
>>
>> The PLT Scheme garbage collector does close file handles.  A database
>> library certainly could, and should, use the garbage collector to
>> close connections.  I don't know which ones do, but that's only my own
>> inexperience with Scheme database libraries.  In both cases, GC
>> doesn't preclude the option to manually close a connection earlier --
>> but GC makes that into an optimization rather than a necessity, for
>> most purposes.
>
> What is the hook to provide GC with such knowledge to close the database
> handles if I need to implement my own database connection?  My failure to
> find such a hook misled me to think GC can't be made handle external
> resources gracefully.
>
> Is it the will executor?  It seems that will isn't called by GC, though.

It is the will executor. It is not automatically called by GC because
that leads to unpredictable execution order.  It is, however, enabled
by GC -- that is, the garbage collector determines when a will
executor is ready to be run.  If you schedule the will executor (put
calls in your program to check when it is ready to run, or spawn a
thread to run it whenever it's available), though, it will run when a
value is ready to be garbage collected.

-- 
Carl Eastlund