[Python-Dev] Resource leaks warnings (original) (raw)

Antoine Pitrou solipsis at pitrou.net
Wed Sep 29 14:42:27 CEST 2010

Le mercredi 29 septembre 2010 à 07:27 -0500, Benjamin Peterson a écrit :

> > I would like to piggy-back on this discussion to suggest further > warnings (either by default, or switchable). > > One feature I've often considered would be to add a warning in FileIO > and socket dealloc if these objects haven't been closed explicitly. In > most situations, relying on garbage collection to shutdown OS resources > (here, file descriptors) is something we like to discourage. > Furthermore, it can produce real bugs, especially under Windows when > coupled with refererence cycles created by traceback objects (the > random testtarfile failures on the Windows buildbots were a symptom of > that; their cause would have been obvious with such warnings). > > What do you think?

It seems like a slippery slope. Sometimes you really don't care like when you're just hacking together a quick script.

Isn't the "with" statement appropriate in these cases?

My assumption is/was that the benefit of warning against leaks in real applications (or even - sigh - the standard library) would outweigh the inconvenience when hacking together a quick script.

But if it doesn't, what about enabling it with a command-line switch?

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