[Patches] getpath patch (repost)

[Skip Montanaro]

    Me> Maybe call _exit()+stdio flushes where _exit() is available and
    Me> abort() otherwise...

    Greg> Um... how about a reset here: WHY do you want to avoid the
    Greg> atexit() functions?

I was just following the thread with a comment.  I suspect you don't want to
call atexit() functions because something seriously bad has happened already
(perhaps a malloc failed) and you don't want to risk screwing things up
worse by executing more Python code at this point.  The goal of the abort()
call is to yield a debuggable core dump.  If you call a bunch of other
stuff, you risk further masking whatever problem caused the fatal error.

If a core dump isn't desired (that seemed to be the gist of the messages
leading up to my first note), then perhaps _exit() would be a better way to
exit gracefully in the face of a fatal error.

-- 
Skip Montanaro, skip@mojam.com, http://www.mojam.com/, http://www.musi-cal.com/
"We have become ... the stewards of life's continuity on earth.  We did not
ask for this role...  We may not be suited to it, but here we are."
- Stephen Jay Gould