On Mar 20, 2017 1:26 PM, "Antoine Pitrou" <solip...@pitrou.net> wrote:
Hello Oleg, On Mon, 20 Mar 2017 18:28:29 +0100 Oleg Nesterov <o...@redhat.com> wrote: > I started to learn python a few days ago and I am trying to understand what > __del__() actually does. https://docs.python.org/3/ reference/datamodel.html > says: > > object.__del__(self) > ... > Note that it is possible (though not recommended!) for the __del__() > method to postpone destruction of the instance by creating a new > reference to it. It may then be called at a later time when this new > reference is deleted. This sentence is not technically wrong, but it can easily be misleading. It says "it *may* then be called at a later time" and probably it should say "it may or may not be called at a later time, depending on the Python implementation you are using". Modern CPython, and all extant versions of PyPy and Jython, guarantee that __del__ is called at most once. MicroPython doesn't support user-defined __del__ methods. It's fine if the text wants to leave that open, but the current phrasing is pretty misleading IMO. I also read it as saying that __del__ would be called again if the object is collected again (which may or may not happen). But AFAICT there are actually zero implementations where this is true. Probably worth a small edit :-) -n
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