Having to "print" before method invocation?

[Fredrik Lundh]

Jeremy L. Moles wrote:

>I have an object (written as part C extension, part pure Python) called
> foo that I've been using without much fuss for a few months now.
> However, in my latest project (a rather large one involving
> multi-threading, pygtk, etc.), I'm seeing some really strange behavior
> with a particular instance of my foo object.
>
> About midway through my program, any attempt to use the instance fails;
> however, if I add print statements before trying to invoke methods on
> it, the foo object instance works fine.

fails in what way?

if you get a spurious exception, it's very likely that your C extension sets the
exception state (either directly or because some API function it uses fails), but
forgets to report this back to Python.

e.g. if you have a C function that does something like

    PyErr_SetString(PyExc_AttributeError, "blah blah"):

    Py_INCREF(Py_None);
    return Py_None;

instead of

    PyErr_SetString(PyExc_AttributeError, "blah blah"):

    return NULL;

the interpreter won't raise the exception immediately (since it expected you to
return NULL if something went wrong), but the exception may still be raised at
a later time, if you run interpreter code that does something like

    do something
    if (PyErr_Occurred())
        ... /* this will catch your error even if "something" succeeds */ ...

*or* it may be masked, by code that does

    PyErr_Clear();
    do something

the actual exception might give you additional clues (e.g. if you get a KeyError,
look for unchecked dictionary accesses in your code, etc).

hope this helps!

</F>