super not working in __del__ ?

[Christopher J. Bottaro]

Fredrik Lundh wrote:

>     "Warning: Due to the precarious circumstances under which __del__()
>     methods are invoked, exceptions that occur during their execution are
>     ignored, and a warning is printed to sys.stderr instead. Also, when
>     __del__() is invoked in response to a module being deleted (e.g.,
>     when execution of the program is done), other globals referenced by
>     the __del__() method may already have been deleted. For this
>     reason, __del__() methods should do the absolute minimum needed
>     to maintain external invariants."

Jeff Epler wrote:

> *       Bugs and caveats: The destruction of modules and objects in
> modules is *       done in random order; this may cause destructors
> (__del__() methods) to *       fail when they depend on other objects
> (even functions) or modules.

2 Questions...
1)  Why does this never happen in C++?  Or does it, its just never happened
to me?
2)  I can understand random destruction of instantiated objects, but I find
it weird that class definitions (sorry, bad terminology) are destroyed at
the same time.  So __del__ can't safely instantiate any classes if its
being called as a result of interpreter shutdown?  Boo...

Oh well, thanks for the help...now I know.