develooper Front page | perl.perl5.porters | Postings from August 2003

Re: [perl #10030] DESTROY not called on code reference objects

Thread Previous | Thread Next
From:
Dave Mitchell
Date:
August 18, 2003 15:21
Subject:
Re: [perl #10030] DESTROY not called on code reference objects
Message ID:
20030818222141.GE1833@fdgroup.com
On Mon, Aug 18, 2003 at 05:49:16PM -0400, Kurt Starsinic wrote:
>     It seems very strange to me to say that an anonymous sub with
> no private variables is "not a closure."  Is not the (shorthand)
> definition of a closure "a subroutine, associated with all its 
> bindings," even when "all" == 0?
> 
>     It's great that we have the optimization of not cloning CV's
> unnecessarily.  It's unfortunate that we have the misfeature of
> Simon's no-DESTRUCT behavior.  It's needlessly confusing to say
> that anonymous subs that have no private bindings aren't closures.
> 
>     Remember the etymology of "closure."  It's from set theory.
> The empty set is a subset of *all* sets.

Well, I've never been very conversant with set theory, so I've never
understood the etymology. I've always used it in the sense of something
which captures outside lexicals. Otherwise *every* sub is/has a closure,
and and the term seems rather to lose its usefulness.
Considering that most of the perl documentation still seems to imply
that only anon subs can be closures, I had assumed I was already
on the liberal wing as regards closure terminology :-)

Dave.

PS - I've been having some sendmail problems this afternoon, so replies to
some of my emails may have bounced or been silently queued, due the
hostname 'gizmo' leaking into sender addresses. Gack I hate sendmail.


-- 
Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what
they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand. 

Thread Previous | Thread Next


nntp.perl.org: Perl Programming lists via nntp and http.
Comments to Ask Bjørn Hansen at ask@perl.org | Group listing | About