"greenflame" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Is there a way to get rid of a variable as though it never existed? I > know this sounds very basic but I have not come across any such > methods.
You can use the 'del' statement to delete a name. > Also is the fact that I will have a bunch of extra variables just > haning around because my use for them is over a bad thing? I will > likely have on the order of 10 to 50 or so of these for the > particular program I an working on at the moment. It doesn't cause the computer any grief to have extra objects; they'll eventually be cleaned up by garbage collection anyway. That said, it sounds like your program is not modular enough, which is a burden on the *programmer* to need to keep so many items in their head at once. It's far better to divide your program into discrete functional units, and write each conceptual step as a function. By dividing your program into functional modules (whether they be functions, classes with methods, or separate program modules) each unit of functionality has a limited scope, and the variables are local and get cleaned up after the function ends. This greatly aids the person reading the program: they have fewer things to concentrate on at any point in your program. -- \ "For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, | `\ neat, and wrong." -- Henry L. Mencken | _o__) | Ben Finney -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
