How do I correctly clean up a Python object?

I'd recommend using Python's with statement for managing resources that need to be cleaned up. The problem with using an explicit close() statement is that you have to worry about people forgetting to call it at all or forgetting to place it in a finally block to prevent a resource leak when an exception occurs.

To use the with statement, create a class with the following methods:

  def __enter__(self)
  def __exit__(self, exc_type, exc_value, traceback)

In your example above, you'd use

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

    def __enter__(self):
        return self

    # ...

    def __exit__(self, exc_type, exc_value, traceback):
        for file in self.files:
            os.unlink(file)

Then, when someone wanted to use your class, they'd do the following:

with Package() as package_obj:
    # use package_obj

The variable package_obj will be an instance of type Package (it's the value returned by the __enter__ method). Its __exit__ method will automatically be called, regardless of whether or not an exception occurs.

You could even take this approach a step further. In the example above, someone could still instantiate Package using its constructor without using the with clause. You don't want that to happen. You can fix this by creating a PackageResource class that defines the __enter__ and __exit__ methods. Then, the Package class would be defined strictly inside the __enter__ method and returned. That way, the caller never could instantiate the Package class without using a with statement:

class PackageResource:
    def __enter__(self):
        class Package:
            ...
        self.package_obj = Package()
        return self.package_obj

    def __exit__(self, exc_type, exc_value, traceback):
        self.package_obj.cleanup()

You'd use this as follows:

with PackageResource() as package_obj:
    # use package_obj

I don't think that it's possible for instance members to be removed before __del__ is called. My guess would be that the reason for your particular AttributeError is somewhere else (maybe you mistakenly remove self.file elsewhere).

However, as the others pointed out, you should avoid using __del__. The main reason for this is that instances with __del__ will not be garbage collected (they will only be freed when their refcount reaches 0). Therefore, if your instances are involved in circular references, they will live in memory for as long as the application run. (I may be mistaken about all this though, I'd have to read the gc docs again, but I'm rather sure it works like this).

Just wrap your destructor with a try/except statement and it will not throw an exception if your globals are already disposed of.

Edit

Try this:

from weakref import proxy

class MyList(list): pass

class Package:
    def __init__(self):
        self.__del__.im_func.files = MyList([1,2,3,4])
        self.files = proxy(self.__del__.im_func.files)

    def __del__(self):
        print self.__del__.im_func.files

It will stuff the file list in the del function that is guaranteed to exist at the time of call. The weakref proxy is to prevent Python, or yourself from deleting the self.files variable somehow (if it is deleted, then it will not affect the original file list). If it is not the case that this is being deleted even though there are more references to the variable, then you can remove the proxy encapsulation.

It seems that the idiomatic way to do this is to provide a close() method (or similar), and call it explicitely.

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.

The absolute best way is to combine both approaches.

To implement a context manager for explicit life-cycle handling. As well as handle cleanup in case the user forgets it or it is not convenient to use a with statement. This is best done by weakref.finalize.

Many libraries actually do it like this. And depending on the severity, you could issue a warning.

import os
from typing import List
import weakref

class Package:
    def __init__(self):
        self.files = []
        self._finalizer = weakref.finalize(self, self._cleanup_files, self.files)

    @staticmethod
    def _cleanup_files(files: List):
        for file in files:
            os.unlink(file)

    def __enter__(self):
        return self

    def __exit__(self, exc_type, exc_value, traceback):
        self._finalizer()

"weakref.finalize returns a callable finalizer object which will be called when obj is garbage collected. Unlike an ordinary weak reference, a finalizer will always survive until the reference object is collected, greatly simplifying lifecycle management."

Unlike atexit.register the object is not held in memory until the interpreter is shut down.

And unlike object.__del__, weakref.finalize is guaranteed to be called at interpreter shutdown. So it is much more safe.