On Thu, 2012-04-19 at 10:48 +1200, Greg Ewing wrote: > Antoine Pitrou wrote: > > > (and here we see why reference-stealing APIs are a nuisance: because > > you never know in advance whether a function will steal a reference or > > not, and you have to read the docs for each and every C API call you > > make) > > Fortunately, they're very rare, so you don't encounter > them often. > > Unfortunately, they're very rare, so you're all the more > likely to forget about them and get bitten. > > Functions with ref-stealing APIs really ought to have > a naming convention that makes them stand out and remind > you to consult the documentation. FWIW my refcount static analyzer adds various new compile-time attributes to gcc: http://gcc-python-plugin.readthedocs.org/en/latest/cpychecker.html#marking-functions-that-steal-references-to-their-arguments so you can write declarations like these:
extern void bar(int i, PyObject *obj, int j, PyObject *other) CPYCHECKER_STEALS_REFERENCE_TO_ARG(2) CPYCHECKER_STEALS_REFERENCE_TO_ARG(4); There's a similar attribute for functions that return borrowed references: PyObject *foo(void) CPYCHECKER_RETURNS_BORROWED_REF; Perhaps we should add such attributes to the headers for Python 3.3? (perhaps with a different naming convention?) Hope this is helpful Dave _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com