[New-bugs-announce] [issue25554] memory leak (reference cycles) using re

[Jeroen van der Heijden]

New submission from Jeroen van der Heijden:

When compiling a regular expression with groups (subpatterns), 
circular references are created.
Here is an example to illustrate the problem:

>>> import gc
>>> import re
>>> gc.disable() # disable garbage collector
>>> gc.collect() # make sure we start with 0
0
>>> re.compile('(a|b)') # compile something with groups
re.compile('(a|b)')
>>> gc.collect() # collects x objects depending on the compiled string
11


To fix the issue a weakref object for p is used.

----------
components: Library (Lib)
files: fix_mem_sre_parse.patch
keywords: patch
messages: 254092
nosy: joente
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: memory leak (reference cycles) using re
type: resource usage
versions: Python 3.5
Added file: http://bugs.python.org/file40948/fix_mem_sre_parse.patch

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<http://bugs.python.org/issue25554>
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