marangoz wrote:

How about introducing internal macros for explicit ob_refcnt accesses in the core? 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))

Comments?

Of course, the above should be (PyObject *)(op)->ob_refcnt. Also, I forgot to mention that if this detail doesn't hurt code aesthetics, one (I) could experiment more easily all sort of weird things with refcounting... I formulated the same wish for malloc & friends some time ago, that is, use everywhere in the core PyMem_MALLOC, PyMem_FREE etc, which would be defined for now as malloc, free, but nobody seems to be very excited about a smooth transition to other kinds of malloc. Hence, I reiterate this wish, 'cause switching to macros means preparing the code for the future, even if in the future it remains intact ;-). Defining these basic interfaces is clearly Guido's job :-) as he points out in his summary of the last Open Source summit, but nevertheless, I'm raising the issue to let him see what other people think about this and allow him to make decisions easier :-) -- Vladimir MARANGOZOV | Vladimir.Marangozov@inrialpes.fr http://sirac.inrialpes.fr/~marangoz | tel:(+33-4)76615277 fax:76615252