On Sun, Dec 04, 2022 at 01:34:13PM -0800, Bruce Leban wrote: > I agree with most criticism of this proposal, although I'll note that > the one place where I'd like something like this is at top level. I > often write something like this at top level: > > __part1 = (some calculation) > __part2 = (some other calculation) > THING = combine(__part1, __part2) > __part1 = __part2 = None
A couple of stylistic points... * I don't know if you have a personal naming convention for double leading underscore names, but to Python and the rest of the community, they have no special meaning except inside a class. So you might want to save your typing and just use a single leading underscore for private names. * You probably don't want to assign the left over private names `__part1` and `__part2` to None. Yes, that frees the references to the objects they are bound to, but it still leaves the names floating around in your globals. Instead, use `del`, which explicitly removes the names from the current namespace, and allows the objects to be garbage collected: _part1 = (some calculation) _part2 = (some other calculation) THING = combine(_part1, _part2) del _part1, _part2 In which case I'm not sure I would even bother with the leading underscores. > If they are large objects and I forget to explictly delete the > references, then they won't be garbage collected. Very true. And when you do forget, what are the consequences? I daresay that your program still runs, and there are no observable consequences. > Looking at all these options, is the cost of adding anything actually > worth the benefit? Probably not. Agreed. Given how rare it is for this sort of thing to actually matter, I think that the correct solution is "remember to del the variable when you are done" not "let's complicate the language". -- Steve _______________________________________________ Python-ideas mailing list -- python-ideas@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to python-ideas-le...@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/python-ideas.python.org/ Message archived at https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-ideas@python.org/message/2ATDFK2JB6UGGEOCQXRP3CG7M5AA3CW3/ Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
