[Python-Dev] PyMem_Malloc() vs PyObject_Malloc()

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Kristján Valur Jónsson wrote:
> 
> I noticed something (in 2.5) yesterday, which may be a feature, but is more likely a bug.
> In tokenizer.c, tok->encoding is allocated using PyMem_MALLOC().
> However, this then gets handed to a node->r_str in parsetok.c, and then released in node.c using PyObject_Free().
> 
> Now, by coincidence, PyObject_Free() will default to free() for objects that it doesn't recognize, so this works.  But is this documented behavior?  The reason I ran into this was that I had redirect the PyMem_* API to a different allocator, but left the PyObject_* one alone.
> 
> My feeling Is that these two APIs shouldn't be interchangeable.  Especially since you can't hand a PyObject_Malloc'd object to PyMem_Free() so the inverse shouldn't be expected to work.
> 
> Any thoughts?

This is a bug. Please file a bug report for this.

In general, either PyObject_* xor PyMem_* memory API should used.

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Marc-Andre Lemburg
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