On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 4:39 PM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 10:52 PM, cool-RR <cool-rr@cool-rr.com> wrote:
> Hello,
> I noticed that the `TemporaryDirectory` context manager creates the folder
> on `__init__` rather than on `__enter__`, resulting in complexity, bugs, and
> hackarounds in `__del__`. I assume there's a good reason for this decision.
> What is it?

From the docstring: "This has the same behavior as mkdtemp but can be
used as a context manager." Like files, it *can* be used as a context
manager, but doesn't have to be.

Also, the complexity wouldn't go away even if the directory creation
was delayed until the __enter__ invocation. People can still call
__enter__ directly, so __del__ would still be obliged to try to clear
things up as best it could.

Cheers,
Nick.

I think that if someone calls `__enter__` directly, he takes the responsibility of calling `__exit__`, so we don't really have to help him with `__del__`.

But other than that I understand the motivation for making it start on `__init__` rather then `__enter__`. I'll just make my own version of it that will work on `__enter__` instead.

Thanks,
Ram.