Re: [Python-Dev] Quick-and-dirty weak references

In reply to no one in particular:

I've often wished that the instance type object had an (optimized) __decref__ slot. With nothing but hand-waving to support it, I'll claim that would enable all these games.

Without context, I don't know when this would be called. If you want this called on all DECREFs (regardless of the refcount value), realize that this is a huge slowdown because it would mean the DECREF macro has to inspect the type object, which means several indirections. This would slow down *every* DECREF operation, not just those on instances with a __decref__ slot, because the DECREF macro doesn't know the type of the object! --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)