Help! File objects and scoping

[Kent Johnson]

bens wrote:
> I'm trying to return an 'mmap' object from a function.  The return
> works, but some of the object's methods crash.  Here are two examples
> 
> doesntwork.py
> ---------------------------
> import mmap
> import os
> 
> name="/any/real/file/on/my/hard/drive"
> 
> def getfile(name):
>     somefile=file(name, 'r+b')
>     mmapped = mmap.mmap(fileno=somefile.fileno(), \
> length=os.path.getsize(name))
>     return mmapped
> 
> mmapped=getfile(name)
> mmapped.seek(1)   #this works, so mmapped is a working mmap object
> print mmapped.size()  #this dies with an error
> mmapped.close()
> --------------------------
> 
> doesntwork.py dies with the error:
> EnvironmentError: [Errno 9] Bad file descriptor

My guess is that when getfile() returns, somefile goes out of scope and the actual file is closed. Try returning both somefile and mmapped or some other way of keeping a reference to someefile.

Kent
> 
> On the other hand,
> doeswork.py
> ---------------------------
> import mmap
> import os
> 
> name="/the/exact/same/file"
> 
> somefile=file(name, 'r+b')
> mmapped = mmap.mmap(fileno=somefile.fileno(), \
> length=os.path.getsize(name))
> 
> mmapped.seek(1)     #works fine
> print mmapped.size()  #works fine, prints out the right number
> mmapped.close()
> --------------------------
> 
> The only difference between doeswork and doesntwork is whether 'mmapped'
> is created in the global scope or created in a local scope and returned.
>  Why does that make a difference?
> 
> The strangest thing about this, I think, is that the error printed out
> above, EnvironmentError, is listed in the docs under "only used as base
> classes for other exceptions".  In other words, it's never supposed to
> be thrown.
> 
> I'll take any advice you can give me.
> Thanks,
> Ben Schwartz
> www.mit.edu/~bens/