From: Andrew M. Kuchling Date: Mon, 1 Mar 2010 19:45:21 +0000 (+0000) Subject: #7637: update discussion of minidom.unlink() and garbage collection X-Git-Tag: v2.7a4~77 X-Git-Url: https://granicus.if.org/sourcecode?a=commitdiff_plain;h=f8af7b46fdfd245ace5bf4752a193756e0e97e56;p=python #7637: update discussion of minidom.unlink() and garbage collection --- diff --git a/Doc/library/xml.dom.minidom.rst b/Doc/library/xml.dom.minidom.rst index cb49c023fa..cfde5b908a 100644 --- a/Doc/library/xml.dom.minidom.rst +++ b/Doc/library/xml.dom.minidom.rst @@ -85,22 +85,12 @@ document: the one that holds all others. Here is an example program:: dom3 = parseString("Some data") assert dom3.documentElement.tagName == "myxml" -When you are finished with a DOM, you should clean it up. This is necessary -because some versions of Python do not support garbage collection of objects -that refer to each other in a cycle. Until this restriction is removed from all -versions of Python, it is safest to write your code as if cycles would not be -cleaned up. - -The way to clean up a DOM is to call its :meth:`unlink` method:: - - dom1.unlink() - dom2.unlink() - dom3.unlink() - -:meth:`unlink` is a :mod:`xml.dom.minidom`\ -specific extension to the DOM API. -After calling :meth:`unlink` on a node, the node and its descendants are -essentially useless. - +When you are finished with a DOM tree, you may optionally call the +:meth:`unlink` method to encourage early cleanup of the now-unneeded +objects. :meth:`unlink` is a :mod:`xml.dom.minidom`\ -specific +extension to the DOM API that renders the node and its descendants are +essentially useless. Otherwise, Python's garbage collector will +eventually take care of the objects in the tree. .. seealso::