JuliaLang/julia — pull request #1091 by timholy (2012-07-28 09:12:17+00:00)
Title: RFC: add ability to delete a finalizer for an object

I've encountered a situation where I want to define a finalizer to do some cleanup in case of error while constructing a file---the finalizer frees some resources and closes the file. However, when everything succeeds, I'd like to immediately close the file so I can pass it to an external program, which will then assume control. With the finalizer, I can't control when that happens without an explicit ``gc()``, which I suspect is not the best choice (?). Consequently, I'd like to remove the finalizer for that object and do the cleanup manually, at the time I want.

This code may get close, but I'm concerned about the ``to_finalize`` array and any gc subtleties I may have missed. Hence the RFC.

If an explicit ``gc()`` is in fact the better way to go, just let me know and close without merging.