buffer overflow

[Florian Schulze]

On Fri, 17 Jan 2003 14:16:38 -0500 Tim Peters <tim.one at comcast.net> wrote:

> [Florian Schulze, on a segfaulting buffer() example]
> > This should easily be resolved by proper reference counting. Then it
> would
> > point to the old list object, but I think seen pythonically this is
> even
> > correct.
> 
> Nope -- the buffer object captures a memory address not associated with
> any
> Python object, so there's no refcount to *be* bumped.  That memory can
> get
> recycled and the buffer object pointing to it has neither a way to stop
> ir
> nor to know about it when it happens.  Dig into the Python-Dev archive
> for
> years of argument about this.  The current buffer object is plain broken.
> That goes a long way toward explaining why you rarely hear about it, BTW
> <wink>.
> 
> dead-feature-walking-ly y'rs  - tim

Ahhh, now I understand why things like readinto aren't documented. I try to
look into the Python-Dev archives later. Are there any plans to fix the
buffer object to do it right by implementing it differently? I think there
are some places where a correct buffer object could speed up execution or
lead to more efficient algorithms, reading binary data from files into
things like numeric arrays for example.

Florian