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Why don't people like lisp?

Bjorn Pettersen bjorn.pettersen at comcast.net
Fri Oct 24 06:40:51 EDT 2003 
Raymond Wiker <Raymond.Wiker at fast.no> wrote in
news:86znfr0yhl.fsf at raw.grenland.fast.no: 

> Bjorn Pettersen <bjorn.pettersen at comcast.net> writes:
> 
>> (c) why are open file objects special (are you saying objects with no
>>     internal references are less likely to be reachable from a cycle,
>>     or that there is something intrinsically special about (open?)
>>     files)? 
> 
>         I cannot think of any scenarios where open files would be
> involved in a cycle, that's all. That doesn't mean that it's
> impossible. 

Ok. Btw., creating such a cycle is easy,

  a = [open('foo')]
  b = [a]
  a.append(b)

(i.e. any file that's reachable from a cycle). IIRC, A commonly used 
'markup' library up until recently kept open file handles for all inline 
images as part of the internal object state -- although I'd perhaps call 
that more of a bug than a scenario? <wink>

-- bjorn
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