On 01/05/2007 9.31, Raymond Hettinger wrote: > PEP: Eliminating __del__
*sigh* I'm still -1, but I won't revive the discussion of course. I would still like if the PEP listed the alternative me and others were proposing, that is changing the semantic of __del__ (or dropping __del__ in favor of a new __close__ method with the new semantic) such as: 1) It is guaranteed to be called only once per object. 2) In case of circular reference, __del__ methods are called in random order on the objects of the cycle, and then the cycle is broken. (This is because step #1 fixes the main problem with calling __del__ in random orders). In fact, your PEP concentrates on the problem of implicit finalization, which I don't think it's generally perceived as *the* problem with __del__. I'm still a *strong* proponent of implicit finalization (aka RAII). It always worked well for me. The problem is that __del__ currently *breaks* implicit finalization, causing garbage if it's used by objects in a cycle. With the fixes above, I'd use it more not less. -- Giovanni Bajo _______________________________________________ Python-3000 mailing list Python-3000@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-3000 Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-3000/archive%40mail-archive.com
