A class implements the special method __del__(), called a destructor, that is invoked when the instance is about to be destroyed. This method might be used to clean up any non memory resources used by an instance.
Example
This __del__() destructor prints the class name of an instance that is about to be destroyed −
#!/usr/bin/python class Point: def __init__( self, x=0, y=0): self.x = x self.y = y def __del__(self): class_name = self.__class__.__name__ print class_name, "destroyed" pt1 = Point() pt2 = pt1 pt3 = pt1 print id(pt1), id(pt2), id(pt3) # prints the ids of the obejcts del pt1 del pt2 del pt3
Output
When the above code is executed, it produces following result −
3083401324 3083401324 3083401324 Point destroyed