How do I correctly clean up a Python object?

Question

class Package:
    def __init__(self):
        self.files = []

    # ...

    def __del__(self):
        for file in self.files:
            os.unlink(file)
         


        

Answer 1

atexit.register is the standard way as has already been mentioned in ostrakach's answer.

However, it must be noted that the order in which objects might get deleted cannot be relied upon as shown in example below.

import atexit

class A(object):

    def __init__(self, val):
        self.val = val
        atexit.register(self.hello)

    def hello(self):
        print(self.val)


def hello2():
    a = A(10)

hello2()    
a = A(20)

Here, order seems legitimate in terms of reverse of the order in which objects were created as program gives output as :

20
10

However when, in a larger program, python's garbage collection kicks in object which is out of it's lifetime would get destructed first.