Andy Lester <a...@petdance.com> added the comment:

> Would you mind to explain how it's an issue to modify PyObject* temporarily 
> during a function call?

It's not a problem to modify the PyObject* during a function call.  However, 
many functions don't need to modify the object, but are still taking non-const 
PyObject* arguments.

For example if I have this code:

    if (Py_TYPE(deque) == &deque_type) {

That doesn't modify deque to check the type, but because Py_TYPE casts away the 
constness, deque can't be a const object.

However, with the new Py_IS_TYPE function:

    if (Py_IS_TYPE(deque, &deque_type)) {

and these two changes:

-static inline int _Py_IS_TYPE(PyObject *ob, PyTypeObject *type) {
+static inline int _Py_IS_TYPE(const PyObject *ob, const PyTypeObject *type) {
     return ob->ob_type == type;
 }
-#define Py_IS_TYPE(ob, type) _Py_IS_TYPE(_PyObject_CAST(ob), type)
+#define Py_IS_TYPE(ob, type) _Py_IS_TYPE(((const PyObject*)(ob)), type)

the deque variable can be const.

Another example of a common pattern that I believe could benefit from this is 
Py_TYPE(ob)->tp_name.  That could be turned into Py_TYPE_NAME(ob) and that 
would allow the ob to be a const pointer. 

If we can keep functions that don't modify the object to accept const PyObject* 
it will help make things safer in the long run.

----------

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Python tracker <rep...@bugs.python.org>
<https://bugs.python.org/issue39573>
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