[PYTHON-CRYPTO] Erasing strings from memory?

[Paul Swartz]

On Tue, Nov 12, 2002 at 12:53:57PM -0500, Jeremy Hylton wrote:
>   PS> I don't know.  I liked that the old code cleared all the
>   PS> references to the string so I don't have to worry about
>   PS> misc. references sitting around keeping this string in memory.
>   PS> Does python really care if strings change on it?
>
> Yes.  Python depends in a lot of ways on strings being immutable.  If
> the string gets stuffed in a dictionary and you modify it, you'll get
> unpredictable results.  The string can also be interned.  You can't
> modify a string in the intern table.

None of these strings will be a dictionary key.  They're either
incorporated into a hash, or parsed into an alternate form.  As for
interning, will they be interned if they're not a dictionary key nor do
I manually intern them?

> I think the solution is to verify that it is not interned (ob_sstate),
> then recalculate the hash after zapping the string.

This sounds like a good idea.  Thanks for all the help/advice.

-p
--
       Paul Swartz
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