How about introducing internal macros for explicit ob_refcnt accesses in the core?
What problem does this solve?
Actually, there are a number of places where one can see "op->ob_refcnt" logic, which could be replaced with _Py_GETREF(op), _Py_SETREF(op, n) thus decoupling completely the low level refcount management defined in object.h:
#define _Py_GETREF(op) (((PyObject *)op)->ob_refcnt) #define _Py_SETREF(op, n) (((PyObject *)op)->ob_refcnt = (n))
Why the cast? It loses some type-safety, e.g. _Py_GETREF(0) will now cause a core dump instead of a compile-time error.
Comments?
I don't see how it's cleaner or saves typing: op->ob_refcnt _Py_GETREF(op) op->ob_refcnt = 1 _Py_SETREF(op, 1) --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)