How to clean a module?

[Diez B. Roggisch]

ai schrieb:
> It assumes that there is a module A which have two global variables X
> and Y. If I run "import A" in the IDLE shell, then I can use A.X and
> A.Y correctly. But if I want to change the module A and then delete
> the variable Y, I find I can use A.Y just the same as before!
> In fact, I have tried all the following methods but can't remove the
> A.Y:
> execute "import A" again
> "reload(A)"
> "del A; import A"
> Yes, if you use "del A.Y", it works. But it is stupid since there are
> probably many names. In my thought, if no one references objects in A,
> "del A" will release all memory about A. But it seems that the fact is
> not. So I can not refresh the namespace to follow changes of a module
> easily and I will worry about the memory if I del a module.
> I want to know if there is a way to clear a module entirely.

There might be other answers - but the easiest and IMHO best is to 
simply restart the interpreter. Because whatever you type in there, you 
could or should even (if it reaches some complexity) put in a small test 
script - and execute that from the interpreter at a shell prompt. The 
advantage is that you don't suffer from any side-effects e.g. IDLE has 
(no Tk mainloop for example) and avoid the problems you describe 
entirely. Together with a bunch of others.

If you want/have to, you can drop into interpreter mode after script 
execution with

python -i myscript.py


Diez