[Python-Dev] FW: static analysis of python source (original) (raw)

Josiah Carlson jcarlson at uci.edu
Fri Apr 20 17:59:55 CEST 2007

Kristján Valur Jónsson <kristjan at ccpgames.com> wrote:

I just ran some static analysis of the python core 2.5 with Visual Studio team system. There was the stray error discovered. I will update the most obvious ones. [snip] 2) There is a lot of code that goes like this: f->buf = PyMemRealloc(f->buf, newsize); if (!f->buf) return PyErrNoMemory(), 0; Now, this if Realloc fails, this causes a memory leak. Is there any interest to fix this flawed pattern wholesale?

I believe the idea is that if you run into a MemoryError, in particular on linux (whose allocator will give you a nonzero pointer well beyond what was actually available), you can't really trust the state of the interpreter, so it is expected that Python will be ending shortly. Forcing the leak (leaving the code as-is) basically encourages the interpreter to have more and more errors before the expected, possibly inevitable (and perhaps desireable) quitting of the Python interpreter.

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