when should I explicitely close a file?

[Dennis Lee Bieber]

However, a Python implementation that always returned 0 for
sys.getrefcount would technically satisfy the word of the documentation,
if not the spirit.

Seems like a count of 1 would be more useful -- after all, there
would be the reference used to pass the object into sys.getrefcount()
itself <G>

 

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Why?

Because a) it uses extra memory needlessly, and b) waiting until an object
has dropped out of cache before touching it again just slows things down.

There are much better ways to do memory management / garbage
collection; especially when dealing with large applications.

Especially with large applications, the above considerations apply even more
so.

If you don’t agree, you might as well stick to Java.