On Sat, 26 Nov 2005, Daniel Schierbeck wrote:

> I just think it's weird that PHP has destructors and Ruby doesn't ;)
> 
>   http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.decon.php

I find this tricky too: the only model I can think of is that where
you need destructors, your constructor desstructs, and you get at
the object with a block, in the style of open("file"){|f| ...}; if
you see what I mean.
> 
> I'm not really into C, neither am I familiar with the Ruby implementation, but
> doesn't all variables just reference an object? So somewhere, an object is
> stored, and each variable referencing it really only holds that object's id. I
> imagine the `finalize' method could be run, and afterwards, the object could
> be replaced with nil, maybe retaining the old object id. That way any
> variables that point to the object will be nil.

But there is only one nil in the system, so it can't have many ids.
> 
> Now, I don't know if that's how it works, but it sounds logical to me,
> speaking as a guy who's never taken any programming lessons or
> programmed/scripted using other languages than PHP, JavaScript and Ruby...
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> Daniel
> 
        Hugh
>