New submission from James Henstridge <ja...@jamesh.id.au>: The documentation for the weakref module contains an example that uses WeakValueDictionary to implement a id2obj() lookup function that doesn't store strong references to those objects.
This example implicitly assumes that the id() of an object will be unique for the lifetime of the interpreter, when it is only unique for the lifetime of the object. The problem can be demonstrated like so: 1. create an object "foo" 2. function 1 remembers the id of this object with "oid1 = remember(foo)" 3. "foo" gets garbage collected 4. an object "bar" is created and happens to get the same memory location 5. function 2 remembers the id of this object with "oid2 = remember(bar)" 6. function 1 looks up its stored object ID with "id2obj(oid1)" In step 6, the object "bar" is returned rather than an exception being raised. As well as the example being broken, the weakref module contains the functionality a programmer would need to do this kind of thing safely: use the weakref.ref type directly. It'd be good to replace the example with a better one. ---------- assignee: georg.brandl components: Documentation messages: 95530 nosy: georg.brandl, jamesh severity: normal status: open title: weakref module example relies on behaviour not guaranteed by id() versions: Python 2.7, Python 3.2 _______________________________________ Python tracker <rep...@bugs.python.org> <http://bugs.python.org/issue7366> _______________________________________ _______________________________________________ Python-bugs-list mailing list Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-bugs-list/archive%40mail-archive.com