STINNER Victor <vstin...@python.org> added the comment:
Mark Shannon: > The old functions aren't going away, so these additional functions provide no > real safety. You can't stop C programmers trading away correctness for some > perceived performance benefit :( In my experience, newcomers tend to copy existing more. If slowly, the code base moves towards safer code less error-prone code like Py_NewRef() or Py_SETREF(), slowly, we will avoid a bunch of bugs. > If we were designing the API from scratch, then this would be a better set of > functions. But because the old functions remain, it just means we are making > the API larger. New API VS enhance the existing API. So far, no approach won. I wrote the PEP 620 to enhance the C API and towards a more opaque API, and there is the HPy project which is a new API written correctly from the start. But HPy is not usable yet, and migrating C extensions to HPy will take years. Also, enhancing the existing API and writing a new API are not exclusive option. What is the issue of making the C API larger? > Please don't add macros, use inline functions. For Py_NewRef(), I used all at once :-) static inline function + function + macro :-) It's exported as a regular function for the stable ABI, but overriden by a static inline function with a macro. The idea is to allow to use it for developers who cannot use static inline functions (ex: extension modules not written in C). I chose to redefine functions as static inline functions in the limited C API. If it's an issue, we can consider to only do that in Include/cpython/object.h. > There seems to be some confusion about borrowed references and stolen > references in > https://pythoncapi.readthedocs.io/bad_api.html#borrowed-references "Stealing" a reference is perfectly safe. Returning a "borrowed" reference is not. > > So, don't bother with `PyTuple_SetItemRef()`, as `PyTupleSetItem()` is safe. I'm really annoyed that almost all functions increase the refcount of their arugments, except a bunch of special cases. I would like to move towards a more regular API. PyTuple_SetItem() is annoying because it steals a reference to the item. Also, it doesn't clear the reference of the previous item, which is also likely to introduce a reference leak. ---------- _______________________________________ Python tracker <rep...@bugs.python.org> <https://bugs.python.org/issue42294> _______________________________________ _______________________________________________ Python-bugs-list mailing list Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-bugs-list/archive%40mail-archive.com
