Ok, in this case I move that we remove this try/except and see where it leads us. If we see problems during teardown, we should deal with them in a more targeted manner. Kristján -----Original Message----- From: Nick Coghlan [mailto:ncoghlan@gmail.com] Sent: 19. desember 2008 13:51 To: Kristján Valur Jónsson Cc: Amaury Forgeot d'Arc; Python-Dev Subject: Re: [Python-Dev] try/except in io.py Generally speaking, close() and __delete__() methods that can be invoked during interpreter shutdown should avoid referencing module globals at all. Necessary globals (including members of other modules) should either be cached on the relevant class or captured in a closure. Now, it may be that the relevant close() method in io.py touches too much code for that to be practical, but it certainly isn't the case in general that encountering Name/Attribute/ImportError during shutdown is inevitable.