[Python-Dev] PEP 454 (tracemalloc) disable ==> clear?

[Ethan Furman]

On 10/31/2013 05:20 AM, Victor Stinner wrote:
> I did another experiment. I replaced enable/disable/is_enabled with
> start/stop/is_tracing, and added enable/disable/is_enabled functions
> to disable temporarily tracing.
>
> API:
>
> - clear_traces(): clear traces
> - start(): start tracing (the old "enable")
> - stop(): stop tracing and clear traces (the old "disable")
> - disable(): disable temporarily tracing
> - enable(): reenable tracing
> - is_tracing(): True if tracemalloc is tracing, False otherwise (the
> old "is_enabled")
> - is_enabled(): True if tracemalloc is enabled, False otherwise

These names make more sense.  However, `stop` is still misleading as it both stops and destroys data.  An easy fix for 
that is for stop to save the data somewhere so get_traces (or whatever) can still retrieve it.

If `stop` really must destroy the data, perhaps it should be called `close` instead; StringIO has a similar close method 
that when called destroys any stored data, and get_value must be called first if that data is wanted.

--
~Ethan~