Which is better in python, del or delattr?

Question

This may be silly, but it\'s been nagging the back of my brain for a while.

Python gives us two built-in ways to delete attributes from objects, the del

Answer 1

Not sure about the inner workings, but from a code reusability and don't be a jerk coworker perspective, use del. It's more clear and understood by people coming from other languages as well.

Answer 2

• del is more explicit and efficient;
• delattr allows dynamic attribute deleting.

Consider the following examples:

for name in ATTRIBUTES:
    delattr(obj, name)

or:

def _cleanup(self, name):
    """Do cleanup for an attribute"""
    value = getattr(self, name)
    self._pre_cleanup(name, value)
    delattr(self, name)
    self._post_cleanup(name, value)

You can't do it with del.