Win32 Perl Programming: The Standard Extensions, Second Edition

Destroying COM Objects

After you have finished using a Win32::OLE object, it needs to be destroyed. Destruction is accomplished in two ways: either by letting the object fall out of scope or by forcing it to destroy itself. Falling out of scope is quite easy; when the function, code block, or script terminates, the object is destroyed. Forcing the object to destroy itself requires that you call the object’s DESTROY() method:

$Object–>DESTROY(); 

This method takes no parameters and causes the object to terminate. Generally speaking, this method is used internally by the object itself and not by a Perl script.

It is possible that a script could run for hours but only need to create a COM object for just a few minutes. Assuming that for some reason ...