[Python-Dev] Resource leaks warnings

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Wed, 29 Sep 2010 10:42:27 pm Antoine Pitrou wrote:

> My assumption is/was that the benefit of warning against leaks in
> real applications (or even - sigh - the standard library) would
> outweigh the inconvenience when hacking together a quick script.
>
> But if it doesn't, what about enabling it with a command-line switch?

I think the ability to detect such file descriptor leaks would be 
valuable, but I'm not sure that it should be running all the time. At 
the risk of bike-shedding, is it something which could be controlled at 
runtime, like garbage collection? E.g. something like:

gc.enable_file_warnings()
run_my_tests_for_leakage()
gc.disable_file_warnings()

or similar. (I'm not wedded to it being in the gc module.)

Otherwise, I'm +0.25 on enabling it with a command line switch, and -0 
on turning it on by default.


-- 
Steven D'Aprano