should I call close() after urllib.urlopen()?
I'm new to Python and reading someone else's code:
should urllib.urlopen() be followed by urllib.close()? Otherwise, one would leak connections, correct?
Answer
The close method must be called on the result of urllib.urlopen, not on the urllib module itself as you're thinking about (as you mention urllib.close -- which doesn't exist).
The best approach: instead of x = urllib.urlopen(u) etc, use:
import contextlib
with contextlib.closing(urllib.urlopen(u)) as x:
...use x at will here...
The with statement, and the closing context manager, will ensure proper closure even in presence of exceptions.