INCREF DECREF manually

[moerchendiser2k3]

Hi,

just a small question. Is it possible to change the refcount of a
reference manually? For debugging / ...

Thanks!

moerchendiser2k3

 

[Jean-Michel Pichavant]

Hi,

just a small question. Is it possible to change the refcount of a
reference manually? For debugging / ...

Thanks!

moerchendiser2k3

Why don't you just create a global reference to the object ? Unless this
one is removed, the object will be kept in memory.

JM

 

[moerchendiser2k3]

Do to some debugging if a version contains a bug and needs to be fixed
there manually.

 

[Antoine Pitrou]

Do to some debugging if a version contains a bug and needs to be fixed
there manually.

This is certainly the wrong approach.
To know if your Python code is leaking references, use either
sys.getrefcount(), or (better) a weakref -- and don't forget to
call gc.collect().
To know if some C extension is buggy, use your C debugger (or your
favourite alternative debugging method, such as printf()).

Changing reference counts from Python will lead to two possible
consequences:
- if you increment a reference count, you will have a permanent memory
leak
- if you decrement a reference count, you will eventually crash the
interpreter