#18 Remove Interp finalizer

[Tom Poindexter]

Removes the 'finalize' method from Jacl Interp.java. Use of 'finalize()' is discouraged in modern Java. This patch simply removes the finalize method.

[Tom Poindexter]

tcljava.interp.finalizer.patch

[Mo DeJong]

Why is this patch needed? The logic just prints to stderr in the case where an interp
was not cleaned up via a call to Interp.dispose() in the normal code. I agree that the
finalize method is mostly useless, but it does do something to try to help to user catch
a real error that can't be discovered any other way.

[Tom Poindexter]

Here's a good summary (under "Finalizers are not your friend")
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/j-jtp01274.html

The fact that they are unreliable make them a poor debugging tool:

public class TestFin {
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
tcl.lang.Interp interp = new tcl.lang.Interp();
interp.eval("puts exiting....");
}
}

$ java -cp 'tcljava.jar;jacl.jar;.' TestFin
exiting....
tpoindex@XXXXX ~/src/testfin
$

For my Aejaks project where I allocate and dispose of many Interps, finalize() means
interpreters may hang around as garbage longer than I'd like.

Perhaps create an InterpDebug class, that extends Interp and includes the finalizer?