[python-win32] Memory Leak in MFC/C++ based Python Extended/Embedded code. (original) (raw)

Mark Hammond mhammond at skippinet.com.au
Tue Jan 8 03:20:43 CET 2008

Python does allocate memory that is never freed - but in general, that is not a "leak", just a 1-time allocation that lives for the life of the program. However, if you repeatedly call Py_Initialize/Finalize, I believe some leaks will happen, and I believe there is an open bug report in the Python tracker regarding this (but don't have the time to find it).

Assuming you just want to init and finalize once, then you can safely ignore the MFC leak check output. Something like 'valgrind' does differentiate between leaks and 1-time allocations, so if you really need a leak checker, you should be looking at something like that.

Cheers,

Mark

-----Original Message----- From: python-win32-bounces at python.org [mailto:python-win32-_ _bounces at python.org] On Behalf Of Dan Trowbridge Sent: Tuesday, 8 January 2008 1:07 PM To: python-win32 at python.org Subject: [python-win32] Memory Leak in MFC/C++ based Python Extended/Embedded code.

Hi all, I have a MS Windows/MFC based C++ code that I have implemented Python embedding/extending in. (I am using Visual Studio 2003.) The code seems to do what I have intended except it always reports a memory leak when it exits. I tried all kinds of things but there did not seem to be anything I could do to get rid of it. So... I built a new MFC project and the only things I added was... #include <Python.h> at the top of the application class .cpp file and the following two lines PyInitialize(); PyFinalize(); in the application class constructor. The minimal code STILL reports a memory error. It looks like the memory leak had nothing to do with my code. Anybody have any ideas how to fix this? Background: I am using Python 2.5.1. I am not using BOOST::PYTHON (I am using BOOST::NUMERIC and BOOST::SHAREDPTR for other things in the code - maybe I should use BOOST::PYTHON - maybe their sharedptr's would take care of this for me? ). I also am not using SWIG or any other "helpers". Any help would be greatly appreciated. If this is not the right forum please advise where to post this. It got to figure that someone has seen this before - considering as long as Python has been around and as big as the developer community is. Thanks in advance for your collective help. Dannyt

python-win32 mailing list python-win32 at python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-win32

More information about the python-win32 mailing list