On Sun, Dec 04, 2022 at 01:34:13PM -0800, Bruce Leban wrote:
I agree with most criticism of this proposal, although I'll note that the one place where I'd like something like this is at top level. I often write something like this at top level:
__part1 = (some calculation) __part2 = (some other calculation) THING = combine(__part1, __part2) __part1 = __part2 = None
A couple of stylistic points... * I don't know if you have a personal naming convention for double leading underscore names, but to Python and the rest of the community, they have no special meaning except inside a class. So you might want to save your typing and just use a single leading underscore for private names. * You probably don't want to assign the left over private names `__part1` and `__part2` to None. Yes, that frees the references to the objects they are bound to, but it still leaves the names floating around in your globals. Instead, use `del`, which explicitly removes the names from the current namespace, and allows the objects to be garbage collected: _part1 = (some calculation) _part2 = (some other calculation) THING = combine(_part1, _part2) del _part1, _part2 In which case I'm not sure I would even bother with the leading underscores.
If they are large objects and I forget to explictly delete the references, then they won't be garbage collected.
Very true. And when you do forget, what are the consequences? I daresay that your program still runs, and there are no observable consequences.
Looking at all these options, is the cost of adding anything actually worth the benefit? Probably not.
Agreed. Given how rare it is for this sort of thing to actually matter, I think that the correct solution is "remember to del the variable when you are done" not "let's complicate the language". -- Steve