[Python-Dev] idea for data-type (data-format) PEP

[Alexander Belopolsky]

On 11/1/06, "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de> wrote:

> That's also an interesting issue for the datatypes PEP: are datatype
> objects meant to be immutable?
>
That's a question for Travis, but I would think that they would be
immutable at the Python level, but mutable at the C level.  In Travis'
approach array size  is not stored in the datatype, so I don't see
much need to modify datatype objects in-place. It may be reasonable to
allow adding fields to a record, but I don't have enough experience
with that to comment.


> This is particularly interesting for the extended buffer protocol:
> how long can one keep the data you get from bt_getarrayinfo?
>
I think your question is limited to shape and strides outputs because
dataformat is a reference counted PyObject (and PEP should specify
whether it is a borrowed reference).

And the answer is the same as for the data from
bf_getreadbuffer/bf_getwritebuffer .  AFAIK, existing buffer protocol
does not answer this question delegating it to the extension module
writers who provide objects exporting their buffers.


> Also, how does the memory management work for the results?

I think it is implied that all pointers are borrowed references.  I
could not find any discussion of memory management in the current
buffer protocol documentation.

This is a good question.  It may be the case that the shape or stride
information is not available as Py_intptr_t array inside the object
that wants to export its memory buffer.  This is not theoretical, I
have a 64-bit application that uses objects that keep their size
information in a 32-bit int.

BTW, I think the memory management issues with the buffer objects have
been resolved at some point.  Any lessons to learn from that?