Tkinter Canvas Items - not ref counted?

[Randall Hopper]

Charles G Waldman:
 |Randall Hopper writes:
 | >      Why does the Canvas Rectangle and its canvas item not get destroyed
 | > using the following fragment:
...
 | >  rect = Rectangle( canvas, 1, 1, 100, 100 )
 | >  rect = None                                  # <--- Destroy it here
...
 |The line "rect = Rectangle( canvas, 1, 1, 100, 100)"
 |causes a rectangle to be created (the call to Rectangle) and it's ID
 |to be stored in the variable "rect".  Subsequently doing "rect = None" 
 |gets rid of the ID but doesn't undo the effect of creating the
 |rectangle - you've just deleted it's handle, not the object itself.
 |
 |Part of the reason this is confusing has to do with the fact that
 |Python and Tk each have their own object hierarchy.
 |
 |If you want to erase the rectangle drawn on the canvas, try:
 |
 | canvas.delete(rect)

Thanks.  It doesn't seem completely intuitive that creating a Tk "shadow"
class creates a widget or canvas item, but deleting the Tk shadow class
doesn't delete the widget or canvas item.  But I'll accept that as how it
works.

Randall