Good old times has an incorrect line

[milesmajefski]

del data[:]

As far as I know, this line would not have the desired effect of clearing the data memory. The slice notation Python makes a copy of the data. So that's not what we want. To fit in with the rest of the code and allow old data to be garbage collected, just assign an empty list to the data variable.

[witte-de-with]

@milesmajefski are you quite sure? http://stackoverflow.com/a/1400622

[crista]

I think this is how you delete the contents of a list, but if you point me to documentation otherwise, I'll rewrite. Thanks.

[davidfstr]

del data[:] is correct for deleting the contents of a list while leaving the list object itself alone.

By demonstration:

>>> data = [1,2,3]
>>> id(data)
4549185608
>>> del data[:]
>>> data
[]
>>> id(data)
4549185608
>>>