Finalizers: the Legend that Won't Die

[Malcolm Wallace]

George Russell <ger at tzi.de> writes:

> Is it safe to run runFinalizers anywhere except in the main IO trunk? 

This is the first question that occurred to me too.

> let
>     x = seq (unsafePerformIO runFinalizers) y
>     finalizer = [... something involving x ...]
> 
> Otherwise you always have the risk of coming a cropper on blackholed values,
> don't you?

But isn't this just the same as any other program that contains a
blackhole fault?  i.e. the program is logically incorrect.  What is
more, the runtime system will probably tell you "Blackhole detected!"
or "<<loop>>" or something, which is helpful.

So I don't see why this sort of program would become particularly
more common than it currently is, if the runFinalizers() procedure
is added to the FFI spec.

Regards,
    Malcolm