Re: [Caml-list] Understanding GC and Alarms

["Björn Pelzer" <bpelzer@uni-koblenz.de>]

Hello Damien!

Damien Doligez wrote:
> Yes, the GC calls the finalisation functions in order, so it waits for your
> finalisation function to finish before starting the next one.  If your
> function doesn't terminate...
> 

Ok, makes sense.

>> Is there a way to get the GC back to normal after an exception during 
>> the alarm?
> 
> That is the purpose of the Gc.finalise_release function: tell the GC to 
> behave
> as if the current finalisation function had finished.  Note that 
> finalise_release
> is also safe to call from outside a finalisation function, so you can 
> call it
> from your exception handler.

Thank you very much! Very helpful, works as you say.
In hindsight I should have figured this out from the manual, but, well, 
I didn't. :-)


> When bug 4742 is fixed (probably in 3.12.0), you won't need it any more.
> Note that I wanted to fix it by ignoring the exception entirely, but
> your use case made me change my mind.

Sounds good, keeping the exception handling would be useful, at least 
for me. Using the release-function as you explained is not much of a 
bother, in particular now that I get how it works, so there is no 
pressing need for a change/bugfix from my side.

Thanks again and best regards,
Björn


-- 
Björn Pelzer
AGKI - Artificial Intelligence Research Group
University Koblenz-Landau, B 225
http://www.uni-koblenz.de/~bpelzer

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