Does python hate cathy?

[Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch]

On Tue, 25 Mar 2008 14:58:51 +0000, Edward A. Falk wrote:

> In article <mailman.2308.1206425945.9267.python-list at python.org>,
> Patrick Mullen <saluk64007 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>>Then again, I can count the number of times I have ever needed __del__
>>with no fingers (never used it!).  Still, quite interesting to
>>explore.
> 
> I used it once, for an object that had a doubly-linked list.
> The __del__() method walked the list, setting all the elements'
> prev/next pointers to None to make sure the elements of the list would
> get garbage-collected.

Without the `__del__()` the elements would get garbage collected just
fine.  If you don't want to wait until the garbage collector in CPython
detects the cycle, you can use `weakref`\s for one of the two "pointers"
in each element.

Ciao,
	Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch