[Python-Dev] reference leaks, del, and annotations (original) (raw)

Greg Ewing greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz
Sat Apr 1 08:50:02 CEST 2006

Nick Coghlan wrote:

from contextlib import closing

with closing(itr): # Use the iterator in here as you wish # secure in the knowledge it will be # cleaned up promptly when you are done # whether it is a file, a generator or # something with a database connection for item in itr: print item

I seem to remember we've been here before. I'll be disappointed if I have to wrap every for-loop that I write in a with-statement on the offchance that it might be using a generator that needs finalisation in order to avoid leaking memory.

I'm becoming more and more convinced that we desperately need something better than del methods to do finalisation. A garbage collector that can't be relied upon to collect garbage is simply not acceptable.

-- Greg

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