[Haskell-cafe] Are handles garbage-collected?

[Sven Panne]

Conal Elliott wrote:
> 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.

The lifetime problems are worse without explicit bracketing IMHO: One has
to wait for the next GC to free them (resource leaks) and even without
bracketing there's nothing to stop you from using a Handle after closing.

Furthermore, the main difference between simple RAM and more "external
things" like Handles is that the effect of keeping them occupied is
observable from outside our happy Haskell world, e.g. a server socket
might stay open, taking away a port number, an external device with
exclusive access is unusable until the next GC, my valuable texture memory
on the graphics card contains unused textures until the GC runs, etc. etc.
Finalizers are not a solution for these problems, a fact that e.g. a lot
of novice Java programmers have to learn when they do their first "real
world" programs...

IMHO it would be best to use explicit bracketing where possible, and hope
for the RTS/GC to try its best when one runs out of a given resource.
Admittedly the current Haskell implementations could be improved a little
bit in the last respect.

Cheers,
    S.