Lifetime of a local reference

[Marko Rauhamaa]

Rhodri James <rhodri at kynesim.co.uk>:
> On 27/02/2019 06:56, Marko Rauhamaa wrote:
>> Then there's the question of a sufficient way to prevent premature
>> garbage collection:
>>
>>       def fun():
>>           f = open("lock")
>>           flock.flock(f, fcntl.LOCK_EX)
>>           do_stuff()
>>           f.close()
>>           sys.exit(0)
>>
>>       def fun():
>>           f = open("lock")
>>           flock.flock(f, fcntl.LOCK_EX)
>>           do_stuff()
>>           f.close
>>           sys.exit(0)
>>
>>       def fun():
>>           f = open("lock")
>>           flock.flock(f, fcntl.LOCK_EX)
>>           do_stuff()
>>           f
>>           sys.exit(0)
>>
>>       def fun():
>>           f = open("lock")
>>           flock.flock(f, fcntl.LOCK_EX)
>>           do_stuff()
>>           sys.exit(0)
>
> I would go with:
>
>     def fun():
>         with open("lock") as f:
>             flock.flock(f, fcntl.LOCK_EX)
>             do_stuff()
>         sys.exit(0)
>
> The description of the with statement does explicitly say that the
> context manager's __exit__() method won't be called until the suite
> has been executed, so the reference to the open file must exist for at
> least that long.

Yeah, but the *true* answer, of course, is:

    def fun():
        f = os.open("lock", os.O_RDONLY)
        flock.flock(f, fcntl.LOCK_EX)
        do_stuff()
        sys.exit(0)

Collect that!

;-)


Marko