phil wrote: > I'm probably dense and don't quite get the point, even though I > have coded about 200,000 lines of Python and coded .5 million lines of > C before there was a C++ > > A class instance based language doesn't have to BE C++ to have a > destructor method.
Very true. But meaningful finalizers are a difficult problem in languages like Python. For example: class A: def __del__(self): print self.b class B: def __init__(self, a): self.a = a def __del__(self): print self.a a = A() a.b = B(a) del a What should happen? How would you implement that behavior? How would you implement that behavior on Java and .NET (neither of which gaurantee that finalizers/destructors will be called). > All I wanted to know is: is the apparent treatment of __del__ > which SEEMS to work fine for me in 2.3.4 deprecated or mangled > in some later release or future plans. __del__ is not currently gauranteed to do anything. Currently it does something. Depending on that something is a bad idea. Could you explain your problem in more detail - maybe we'll have some suggestions. Cheers, Brian -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list