Tag Archives: Gotcha

Leaky method references

Posted on November 4, 2009 by lorg

After reading my last post regarding __del__, you should know that __del__ + reference cycle = leak. Let’s say that you do need to use __del__, so you decide to avoid reference cycles. You write your code in such a … Continue reading →

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Python Gotchas No. 2: Garbage Collection Oddities

Posted on October 30, 2009 by lorg

Python is a garbage collected language. The garbage collector will collect orphaned objects. These are objects that have no references. If an object has a __del__ method, it will be called when that object is collected. Note however, that there … Continue reading →

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Python Gotchas 1: __del__ is not the opposite of __init__

Posted on October 20, 2009 by lorg

After discussing my last post with a friend and talking about a few other issues, we came to the conclusion that it would be worthwhile to discuss more gotchas. First though, what is a gotcha? Wikipedia gives a good definition: … Continue reading →

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GeneratorExit: another reason to upgrade to Python 2.6

Posted on October 18, 2009 by lorg

Ever heard of GeneratorExit? Unless you write generators, and do some unusual stuff with them, you probably haven’t encountered it. GeneratorExit is a special exception that gets raised from within a generator when it is close()-ed. For example, consider the … Continue reading →

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