[Python-Dev] Overwriting objects before deallocating them

[Guido van Rossum]

> Is it worth trying to slowly fix it?  Picking a preferred name and
> making the interpreter's code use it consistently would be a start.

We're doing our best: new/del (and case variants) are now recommended
everywhere.  It's still a mess because 'del' just means 'free', and
'new' mostly just means 'alloc', but because of the large amount of
existing code using these conventions I don't want to try to migrate
to something new.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)