[Haskell-cafe] Are handles garbage-collected?

[Glynn Clements]

Conal Elliott wrote:

> > > What happens when a System.IO.Handle falls out of scope
> > > without being explicitly hClosed? Is that a resource leak?
> > > Or will the RTS close the handle for me?
> > 
> > AFAIK, Handles have finalisers which close them, but I don't know if GHC
> > triggers garbage collection when file descriptors run out.  If not, you
> > will have problems if you manage to run out of fds between GCs.
> > 
> > How about using bracket to introduce explicit close on end of scope?
> 
> I'm puzzled why explicit bracketing is seen as an acceptable solution.
> It seems to me that bracketing has the same drawbacks as explicit memory
> management, namely that it sometimes retains the resource (e.g., memory
> or file descriptor) longer than necessary (resource leak) and sometimes
> not long enough (potentially disastrous programmer error).  Whether the
> resource is system RAM, file descriptors, video memory, fonts, brushes,
> bitmaps, graphics contexts, 3D polygon meshes, or whatever, I'd like GC
> to track the resource use and free unused resources correctly and
> efficiently.

File descriptors aren't simply a "resource" in the sense that memory
is. Closing a descriptor may have significance beyond the process
which closes it. If it refers to the write end of a pipe or socket,
closing it may cause the reader to receive EOF; if it refers to a
file, any locks will be released; and so on.

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn.clements at virgin.net>