dojo.connect Widget gotcha

I'm not too sure this small issue I ran into actually constitutes a full blog post, but here goes all the same. After reading phiggins' article on how to dispose of programatically created dijits, I started keeping track of the handles returned from dojo.connects and dojo.subscribes. I figured that these return values should be disconnected/unsubscribed just before a widget was destroyed to aid with garbage collection. Hence, a lot of my widgets started to look like this:

dojo.declare(
 "my.widget.AccountCreator",
 [dijit._Widget, dijit._Templated],
 {
   templatePath: dojo.moduleUrl("my.widget", "templates/AccountCreator.html"),
   widgetsInTemplate: true,
   _subscriptions: [],
   _connects: [],
  
   postCreate: function() {
     this._connects.push(dojo.connect(dijit.byId("accountCreatorDialog"), "hide", this, "_handleHideDialog"));
     this._subscriptions.push(dojo.subscribe("/acct/created", this, "_handleAccountCreated"));
   },

   destroy: function() {
     // first clean up my connects and handles
     dojo.forEach(this._subscriptions, dojo.unsubscribe);
     dojo.forEach(this._connects, dojo.disconnect);
     this._subscriptions = [];
     this._connects = [];
     // now go ahead and delete the rest of the widget
     this.inherited(arguments);
   }

Seems relatively simple, right? Being a good memory citizen and cleaning up just before the widget gets destroyed seems like a win-win situation. However, notice that my collection of dojo.connect handles is named _connects. Check out the source code for dijit._Widget (my.widget.AccountCreator inherits from dijit._Widget):

  create: function(/*Object?*/params, /*DomNode|String?*/srcNodeRef){
   // summary:
   //    Kick off the life-cycle of a widget
   // params:
   //    Hash of initialization parameters for widget, including
   //    scalar values (like title, duration etc.) and functions,
   //    typically callbacks like onClick.
   // srcNodeRef:
   //    If a srcNodeRef (DOM node) is specified:
   //      - use srcNodeRef.innerHTML as my contents
   //      - if this is a behavioral widget then apply behavior
   //        to that srcNodeRef
   //      - otherwise, replace srcNodeRef with my generated DOM
   //        tree
   // description:
   //    Create calls a number of widget methods (postMixInProperties, buildRendering, postCreate,
   //    etc.), some of which of you'll want to override. See http://docs.dojocampus.org/dijit/_Widget
   //    for a discussion of the widget creation lifecycle.
   //
   //    Of course, adventurous developers could override create entirely, but this should
   //    only be done as a last resort.
   // tags:
   //    private

   // store pointer to original DOM tree
   this.srcNodeRef = dojo.byId(srcNodeRef);

   // For garbage collection.  An array of handles returned by Widget.connect()
   // Each handle returned from Widget.connect() is an array of handles from dojo.connect()
   this._connects = [];

Having a property of _connects on a custom dijit which inherits from dijit._Widget landed me in trouble. When my.widget.AccountCreator's destroy method was called, the call to dojo.disconnect was throwing an odd looking error:

Result of expression '([dojo._listener, del, node_listener][listener])' [undefined] is not an object

As pointed out by both @neonstalwart and @cb1kenobi (thanks!), there's a simple solution to all this - just use the connect method in dijit._Widget.

this.connect(dijit.byId("accountCreatorDialog"), "hide", "_handleHideDialog");

dijit._Widget's connect method will also take care of automatically disconnect each dojo.connect handle when the widget is destroyed. As a result, you don't need to override the destroy method of your custom widget to clean up any lingering handles.

Have you ever stumbled into an issue like this - are there any other 'common' internal dojo variable names that you've unconsciously clobbered?