Sturla had some great comments; I'll add, in no particular order: 1) You could use the ctypes module to call the real malloc and free from Python. 2) Yes, a Python "C extension module" can do explicit memory allocation. 3) Cython provides a language that is a hybrid of Python and C. It might be nice as a way of introducing explicit memory management. 4) You could also build a heap (not the tree kind, but the malloc kind) in pure Python, and give it alloc and destroy operations. Underneath it all, things would still be reference counted/garbage collected, but that wouldn't actually happen until you used your destroy.
On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 9:51 AM, Daniel Neilson <ddneil...@gmail.com> wrote: Part of our first year curriculum requires that students be exposed to > explicit dynamic memory allocation in the form of C++'s new/delete, C's > malloc/free, etc. I realize that Python is garbage collected, and that there > is never a need to explicitly allocate & deallocate objects. However, I am > trying to determine whether or not it is possible to simulate that behaviour > within Python via a module for the purposes of instruction. > > For these purposes, I would like to know whether it is possible within > Python 3 to write a Python-only module that, essentially, hooks into the > "constructor" and "destructor" of many of the Python built-in types > (specifically list, dictionary, set, tuple, and string) so that the module > can: > 1) Maintain a list of object id()'s for objects that have been created. > Ideally, this list would also contain the file & line number where the > object was created. > 2) Provide a "deallocate" function that will remove a given object's id() > from the list from (1). > 3) Print out an error message if the python script terminates with a > non-empty list from (1). Preferably with a list of objects that are still > "allocated." > > Baring a Python-only module, would this behaviour be possible to add via a > C-language module? > > A module that hooked in to all memory allocation, and inspected the type > of the object being allocated to conditionally add the object's id() to the > list would also suffice. > > In either case, if such a module is possible, any pointers you could > provide regarding how to implement such a module would be appreciated. > > Thank you for your time, > Daniel > -- > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list >
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