[Numpy-discussion] .transpose() of memmap array fails to close()

[Glen W. Mabey]

On Tue, Aug 14, 2007 at 12:23:26AM -0400, Anne Archibald wrote:
> On 13/08/07, Glen W. Mabey <Glen.Mabey at swri.org> wrote:
> 
> > As I have tried to think through what should be the appropriate
> > behavior for the returned value of __getitem__, I have not been able to
> > see an appropriate solution (let alone know how to implement it) to this
> > issue.
> 
> Is the problem one of finalization? That is, making sure the memory
> map gets (flushed and) closed exactly once? In this case the
> numpythonic solution is to have only the original mmap object do any
> finalization; any slices contain a reference to it anyway, so they
> cannot be kept after it is collected. If the problem is that you want
> to do an explicit close/flush on a slice object, you could just always
> apply the close/flush to the base object of the slice if it has one or
> the slice itself if it doesn't.

The immediate problem is that when a numpy.memmap instance is created as
another view of the original array, then __del__ on that new view fails.

flush()ing and closing aren't an issue for me, but they can't be
performed at all on derived views right now.  It seems to me that any
derived view ought to be able to flush(), and ideally in my mind,
close() would be called [automatically] only just before the reference 
count gets decremented to zero.  

That doesn't seem to match the numpythonic philosophy you described,
Anne, but seems logical to me, while still allowing for both manual
flush() and close() operations.

Thanks for your response.

Glen