How to DECREF an Python object to return?

[Ahn, Jae-wook]

Hi.

I wrote a C extension module that recieves a string and extracts some nouns
(in Korean) from the string and return them. The group of nouns to return is
a tuple, and the number of elements varies depending on the source string.

So I created a tuple object and returned it using Py_BuildValue. The module
returned the value I wanted, but because I created a Python object for the
tuple, I have to free (Py_DECREF) the memory it occupies.

My question is in what point I can free it? The function works like this.

1. recieves a sentence.
2. extracts nouns from it
3. create a tuple object
4. set the elements for the tuple
5. return the tuple object ( return PyBuildValue("O", tuple) )

Because I want the tuple get returned, I can't free it before returning it,
but after I return it, the function I created finishes. How can I get the
tuple back and free the memory?