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  From: Andrew Reid <andrew.reid@plug.cx>
  To  : Andrew Pullin <andrew@hotspurbgc.com.au>
  Date: 07 Nov 2001 13:26:42 -0930

Re: Unsetting variables in Python

On Wed, 2001-11-07 at 12:40, Andrew Pullin wrote:

>     Why do you need to "unset" a variable? In most other
> languages that I have programmed in, if you need to "unset"
> a variable then you usually give it a null value, ie stringv
> = "". If it is a memory issue and a variable is of a set
> length then you would free the memory using the appropriate
> command. Are you trying to free up memory here? If not, why
> bother killing the variable at all? If memory is not an
> issue, then a dead variable won't make any difference
> anyhow. If the program doesn't refer to the variable again
> then it just takes up space. Sorry if this isn't much help,
> but I am interested why you need to do this.

For this particular application, I suppose that I could have just
assigned NULL to the variable.

unset()-ish functions would be used for ``if-defined'' clauses -- a
variable can be declared as NULL.

   - andrew

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