[Numpy-discussion] Should ndarray be a context manager?

[Chris Barker]

On Wed, Dec 10, 2014 at 8:40 PM, Sturla Molden <sturla.molden at gmail.com>
wrote:

> > I haven't managed to trigger a segfault yet but it sure looks like I
> > could...
>
> You can also trigger random errors. If the array is small, Python's memory
> mamager might keep the memory in the heap for reuse by PyMem_Malloc. And
> then you can actually modify some random Python object with bogus bits. It
> can screw things up even if you do not see a segfault.
>

I should have said that -- I did see random garbage -- just not an actual
segfault -- probably didn't allocate a large enough array for the system to
reclaim that memory.

Anyway, the point is that if we wanted this to be a
used-more-than-very-rarely in only very special cases feature de-allocating
an array's data buffer), then ndarray would need to grow a check for an
invalid buffer on access.

I have no idea if that would make for a noticeable performance hit.

-Chris

>
> --

Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
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