Bug report: memory leak in python 1.5.2

[Michael Hudson]

Moshe Zadka <moshez at math.huji.ac.il> writes:
> On Wed, 26 May 1999, Greg McFarlane wrote:
> 
> > Environment: Solaris 2.5.1, gcc
> > 
> > The following script chews up cycles (as expected) as well as memory
> > (megabytes every few seconds).
> > 
> > Does anyone know why?
> > 
> > ======================================================================
> > import os
> > while 1:
> >   os.environ['FOO'] = 'BAR'
> > ======================================================================
> 
> No, but just to keep you sane:
> Mine does exactly the same,
> 
> Python:
> Python 1.5.2 (#1, May 23 1999, 07:05:44)  [GCC 2.8.1] on sunos4
> Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
> 
> uname -a:
> SunOS sunset 4.1.4 9 sun4m
> 
> (I'll check it later on my linux box)

Well poking around the source to posixmodule.c one finds this:

        /* XXX This leaks memory -- not easy to fix :-( */
        if ((new = malloc(strlen(s1) + strlen(s2) + 2)) == NULL)
                return PyErr_NoMemory();
        (void) sprintf(new, "%s=%s", s1, s2);
        if (putenv(new)) {
                posix_error();
                return NULL;
        }

so at least someone knows about the problem.

Yours,
Michael