[PYTHON MATRIX-SIG] Re: may be a bug

[Tser-Yuan (Brian) Yang]

I finally figure out what is holding the two extra reference counts in the
following block of script.

>>> from Numeric import *
>>> a=array((1,2))
>>> import sys
>>> sys.getrefcount(a)
2
>>> print a
1 2
>>> sys.getrefcount(a)
4


One is the variable 'data' in arrayToString (in ArrayPrinter.py), and the
other is the exception handler. After I added 'del data' before the
return of arrayToString, and commented out some statements in arrayToString:

    if max_line_width is None:
#	try:
#	    max_line_width = sys.output_line_width
#	except AttributeError:
	    max_line_width = 77
    if precision is None:
#	try:
#	    precision = sys.float_output_precision
#	except AttributeError:
	    precision = 8
    if suppress_small is None:
#	try:
#	    suppress_small = sys.float_output_suppress_small
#	except AttributeError:
	    suppress_small = 0

The same block of script gives:

>>> from Numeric import *
>>> a=array((1,2))
>>> import sys
>>> print a
1 2
>>> sys.getrefcount(a)
2

I agree this is probably a feature rather than a bug, since these reference
counts will be released after printing another array. Just to point this out
in case some of you may be interested.
						Brian Yang


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