C API and memory allocation

[Gabriel Genellina]

En Wed, 17 Dec 2008 21:35:04 -0200, Floris Bruynooghe  
<floris.bruynooghe at gmail.com> escribió:

> On Dec 17, 11:06 pm, Floris Bruynooghe <floris.bruynoo... at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> So I'm assuming PyArg_ParseTuple()
>> must allocate new memory for the returned string.  However there is
>> nothing in the API that provides for freeing that allocated memory
>> again.
>
> I've dug a little deeper into this and found that PyArg_ParseTuple
> (and friends) end up using PyString_AS_STRING() (Python/getargs.c:793)
> which according to the documentation returns a pointer to the internal
> buffer of the string and not a copy and that because of this you
> should not attempt to free this buffer.

Yes; but you don't have to dig into the implementation; from  
http://docs.python.org/c-api/arg.html :

s (string or Unicode object) [const char *]
Convert a Python string or Unicode object to a C pointer to a character  
string. You must not provide storage for the string itself; a pointer to  
an existing string is stored into the character pointer variable whose  
address you pass.

> But how can python now know how long to keep that buffer object in
> memory for?

It doesn't - *you* have to ensure that the original string object isn't  
destroyed (by example, incrementing its reference count as long as you  
keep the pointer), or copy the string contents into your own buffer.

-- 
Gabriel Genellina