ob_refcnt INCREF and so on...

[Fredrik Lundh]

jkraska1 at san.rr.com wrote:
> In my efforts to grok references, I wrote a function to print the
> ob_refcnt of python objects so I could test my understanding of
> the reference system.

in other words, you've reimplemented sys.getrefcount:

    http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/module-sys.html

> In the above code fragment, checkref(o) prints "2". The object "o"
> has two references to it, and I'm not sure why. The closest thing
> I have to a theory is that at the point of creating the argument,
> "o" is assigned to a temporary tuple which grabs a reference count
> to "o" (I based this theory on the knowledge that I have to parse
> a tuple in the C extension code).

that's correct (also see the getrefcount docs).

</F>