[Pythonmac-SIG] memory corruption Python 2.3/Mac OS 10.3?

Rayme Jernigan rayme at pobox.com
Thu Aug 26 20:03:35 CEST 2004


Hi All. I've been dealing with a nasty bug that looks a lot like memory 
corruption in the version of Python that comes installed on OS X 
10.3.5.

In short I have a list of lists that (without my telling it to) is 
filling itself up with copies of a list element instance. The instance 
value actually exists... it is defined elsewhere, and it's later 
assigned to the zeroth element of the list, but it magically gets 
assigned before I tell it to, and fills up the entire list to boot. 
Judicious placement of print statements before and after some 
operations on this list element which do not reference this "list of 
lists" verify that this is what's happening. Arggh.

I run Python by pointing my BBEdit editor to PythonLancher from 
MacPython 2.3. Think this invokes the default Darwin install of "Python 
2.3.0" (sys.version_info produces sys.version_info (2, 3, 0, 'final', 
0).

I read that one of the fixes to 2.3.3 was to fix a memory corruption 
problem that involved garbage collection:
http://www.python.org/2.3.3/NEWS.html

... so Mac appears to have a pre-garbage collection bug fix version. 
But before I try to replace the default Darwin install Python 2.3.0 
with something else, I wanted to verify that I'm on the right track.

Has anyone heard of this problem in the OS X 10.3.5-ish installed 
version of Python? Is there a fix without the need to rip and replace? 
Thanks,

-Rayme.



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