__del__ and logging

[flupke]

Vinay Sajip wrote:
> flupke <flupke <at> nonexistingdomain.com> writes:
> 
> 
>>Hi,
>>
>>i have a class and a class attribute log which is a logger object. In 
>>the __del__() function i want to log a message but it fails even if i 
>>use self.__class__.log.
>>
>>The error i get is this:
>>Traceback (most recent call last):
>>   File "C:\Python24\lib\logging\__init__.py", line 712, in emit
>>     self.stream.write(fs % msg)
>>ValueError: I/O operation on closed file
>>
>>So is there no way to use the logger object in a __del__
>>I wanted to use the message to clearly indicate in the logger file that 
>>the instance had closed ok.
>>
> 
> 
> It all depends. If your __del__ is being called via atexit() for application
> cleanup, for example, logging may not be available to you because it has been
> cleaned up beforehand.
> 
> The logging module registers an atexit() handler to flush and close handlers
> before script termination.
> 
> Vinay Sajip
> 
> 

Thanks i was able to solve it using a function registered in both the 
classes i used in that project.
Why would one use __del__ instead of atexit then especially if the calls 
  you make in __del__ are so unrelieable?

Regards,
Benedict