Mailman 3 August 2009 - Python-Dev

pylinting the stdlib
by Vincent Legoll 03 Aug '09

03 Aug '09

Hello, I've fed parts of the stdlib to pylint and after some filtering there appears to be some things that looks strange, I've filled a few bugs to the tracker for them. 6623 Lib/ftplib.py netrc class parsing problem 6622 [RFC] wrong variable used in Lib/poplib.py 6621 [RFC] Remove leftover use of Carbon module from Lib/binhex.py 6620 Variable may be used before first being assigned to in Lib/locale.py 6619 Remove duplicated function in Lib/inspect.py Is this useless and taking reviewer's time for nothing ? Please advise, if this is deemed useful, I'll continue further -- Vincent Legoll

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standard library mimetypes module pathologically broken?
by Jim Jewett 03 Aug '09

03 Aug '09

[It may be worth creating a patch; I think most of these comments would be better on the bug-tracker.] (1) In a few cases, it looked like you were changing parameter names between "files" and "filenames". This might break code that was calling it with keyword arguments -- as I typically would for this type of function. (1a) If you are going to change the .sig, you might as well do it right, and make the default be "knownfiles" rather than the empty tuple. (2) The comment about why inited was set true at the beginning of the function instead of the end should probably be kept, or at least reworded. (3) Default values: (3a) Why the list of known files going back to Apache 1.2, in that order? Is there any risk in using too *new* of a MimeTypes file? I would assume that the goal is to pick up whatever changes the user has made locally, but in that case, it still makes sense to have the newest file be the last one read, in case Apache has made bugfixes. (3b) Also, this would improve cross-platform consistency; if I read that correctly, the Apache files will override the python defaults on unix or a mac, but not on windows. That will change the results on the majority of items in _common_types. (application vs text, whether to put an x- in front of the word pict.) (3c) rtf is listed in non-standard, but http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/ does define it. (Though whether to guess application vs text is not defined, and python chooses differently from apache.) (3d) jpg is listed as non-standard. It turns out that this is just for the inverse mapping, where image/jpg is non-standard (for image/jpeg) but that is worth a comment. (see #5) (3e) In _types_map, the lines marked duplicates are duplicate keys, not duplicate values; it would be more clear to also comment out the (first) line itself, instead of just marking it a duplicate. (Or better yet, to mention that it is just being added for the inverse mapping, if that is the case.) (4) Why bother to lazyinit? Is there any sane usecase for a MimeTypes that hasn't been inited? I see value in not reading the default files, but none in not reading at least the files that were asked for. I could see value in only partial initialization if there were several long steps, but right now, initialization is all-or-nothing. If the thing is useless without an init, then it makes sense to just get done it immediately and skip the later checks; anyone who could have actually saved time should just remove the import. -jJ

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Re: [Python-Dev] [regex] memory leak
by MRAB 02 Aug '09

02 Aug '09

John Machin wrote: > Hi Matthew, > > Your post in c.l.py about your re rewrite didn't mention where to report > bugs etc so I dug this address out of Google Groups ... > > Environment: Python 2.6.2, Windows XP SP3, your latest (29 July) regex > from the Python bugtracker. > > Problem is repeated calls of e.g. compiled_pattern.search(some_text) -- > Task Manager performance panel shows increasing memory usage with regex > but not with re. It appears to be cumulative i.e. changing to another > pattern or text doesn't release memory. > > Example: > > 8<-- regex_timer.py > import sys > import time > if sys.platform == 'win32': > timer = time.clock > else: > timer = time.time > module = __import__(sys.argv[1]) > count = int(sys.argv[2]) > pattern = sys.argv[3] > expected = sys.argv[4] > text = 80 * '~' + 'qwerty' > rx = module.compile(pattern) > t0 = timer() > for i in xrange(count): > assert rx.search(text).group(0) == expected > t1 = timer() > print "%d iterations in %.6f seconds" % (count, t1 - t0) > 8<--- > > Here are the results of running this (plus observed difference between > peak memory usage and base memory usage): > > dos-prompt>\python26\python regex_timer.py regex 1000000 "~" "~" > 1000000 iterations in 3.811500 seconds [60 Mb] > > dos-prompt>\python26\python regex_timer.py regex 2000000 "~" "~" > 2000000 iterations in 7.581335 seconds [128 Mb] > > dos-prompt>\python26\python regex_timer.py re 2000000 "~" "~" > 2000000 iterations in 2.549738 seconds [3 Mb] > > This happens on a variety of patterns: "w", "wert", "[a-z]+", "[a-z]+t", > ... > Thanks for that, John. I've should've kept an eye on the Task Manager! :-) Now fixed. It's surprising how much time and effort is needed just to manage the memory!

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REVIEW: PyArg_ParseTuple with "s" format and NUL: Bogus TypeError detail string.
by Sean Reifschneider 02 Aug '09

02 Aug '09

Please review this, I'm worried that there are cases where convertitem() is returning a string that really should be overridden by the argument "help string". However, I'm worried that this change will get rid of useful messages (via the format "; help string"), when there otherwise wouldn't be. PyArg_ParseTuple when handling a string format "s", raises a TypeError when the passed string contains a NUL. However, the TypeError doesn't contain useful information. For example: syslog.syslog('hello\0there') TypeError: [priority,] message string This seems to be a thinko in Python/getargs.c at line 331: msg = convertitem(PyTuple_GET_ITEM(args, i), &format, p_va, flags, levels, msgbuf, sizeof(msgbuf), &freelist); if (msg) { seterror(i+1, msg, levels, fname, message); <<< Line 331 return cleanreturn(0, freelist); } This also applies to Python 3 trunk in line 390. I think that's supposed to be "msg" instead of "message" in the last argument. If I change it, I get: >>> import syslog; syslog.syslog('hello\0there') Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> TypeError: must be string without null bytes, not str I think it's safe to change "message" to "msg" because: "message" is the "help" string "[priority,] message string", but "msg" contains much more useful information. "msg" is in the "fall back if the last argument doesn't contain useful information" argument position, but "msg" is never NULL. "message" only is NULL if the format string doesn't contain ";". In every case I can find in the code, convertitem() is returning a much more useful string than the help string. Or perhaps it should do something like: if (msg) { seterror(i+1, msg, levels, fname, '%s (%s)' % ( msg, message )); Pardon my mixed C+Python, but you get the idea. Thoughts? Thanks, Sean -- [...] Premature optimization is the root of all evil. -- Donald Knuth Sean Reifschneider, Member of Technical Staff <jafo(a)tummy.com> tummy.com, ltd. - Linux Consulting since 1995: Ask me about High Availability

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