"Amir Michail" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > But dosomestuff can get rid of its reference before it returns (perhaps > it has a lot more to do before it returns and so you would want to > garbage collect the parameter object as soon as possible).
That would be so rare and weird that your best bet is to just pass a boxed object in the odd circumstances where it will make any difference. Instead of dosomestuff(x), say dosomestuff([x]). Then dosomestuff can mutate the list: def dosomestuff(xl): x = xl.pop() ... do stuff with x ... x = None # free the reference ... more stuff... -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list