[Python-Dev] ctypes, memory mapped files and context manager

[eryk sun]

On Thu, Jan 5, 2017 at 11:28 PM, Hans-Peter Jansen <hpj at urpla.net> wrote:
> Leaves the question, how stable this "interface" is?
> Accessing _objects here belongs to voodoo programming practices of course, but
> the magic is locally limited to just two lines of code, which is acceptable in
> order to get this context manager working without messing with the rest of the
> code.

My intent was not to suggest that anyone directly use the _objects
value / dict  in production code. It's a private implementation
detail. I was demonstrating the problem of simply releasing the buffer
and the large number of checks that would be required if b_ptr is
cleared. It would be simpler for a release() method to allocate new
memory for the object and set the b_needsfree flag, but this may hide
bugs. Operating on a released object should raise an exception.