[New-bugs-announce] [issue45728] SharedMemory documentation: System V vs Posix

[jkrupp]

New submission from jkrupp <python_cee2df at jkrupp.de>:

Hi,

the documentation for the shared_memory module states that "shared memory refers to “System V style” shared memory". However, I believe it might be clearer to talk about "POSIX style shared memory" here instead.

Primed by the "System V style"-comment, I had expected that shared memory blocks could be identified through a numeric ID (as used by the system V shared memory APIs `shmget`, `shmat`, ...). After looking at the implementation it became clear though, that the newer POSIX-API (`shm_open`, `shm_unlink`, ...) is used, which explains why shared memory blocks have a *name* instead.

Technically, the documentation only uses "System V style" to distinguish it from "distributed shared memory", and further states that "[it] is not necessarily implemented explicitly as such". Yet, this distinction is particularly relevant if memory is to be shared with other (non-python!) processes (although placement of shared_memory in the multiprocessing package might indicate that that is not one of its expected use-cases...)

----------
assignee: docs at python
components: Documentation
messages: 405797
nosy: docs at python, jkrupp
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: SharedMemory documentation: System V vs Posix
type: enhancement
versions: Python 3.10, Python 3.11, Python 3.8, Python 3.9

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<https://bugs.python.org/issue45728>
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