DESTROY is merely a special subroutine that is called when an object goes out of scope, but right before it is garbage collected. DESTROY is merely a convenient way to have "cleanup" code executed when your object goes away. If you set up a blank DESTROY and called it, nothing would happen.

package Foo;

sub new { bless { test => 1 }, $_[0] }
sub DESTROY {}

package main;
use Data::Dumper;
my $foo = new Foo;
print Dumper $foo;
$foo->DESTROY;
print Dumper $foo;
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Cheers,
Ovid

New address of my CGI Course.
Silence is Evil (feel free to copy and distribute widely - note copyright text)