[New-bugs-announce] [issue46785] On Windows, os.stat() can fail if called while another process is creating or deleting the file

[Antony Lee]

New submission from Antony Lee <anntzer.lee at gmail.com>:

In a first Python process, repeatedly create and delete a file:

from pathlib import Path
while True:
    Path("foo").touch(); Path("foo").unlink()

In another process, repeatedly check for the path's existence:

from pathlib import Path
while True: print(Path("foo").exists())

On Linux, the second process prints a random series of True and False.  On Windows, it quickly fails after a few dozen iterations (likely machine-dependent) with

PermissionError: [WinError 5] Access is denied: 'foo'

which is actually raised by the stat() call.

I would suggest that this is not really desirable behavior?

----------
components: Windows
messages: 413468
nosy: Antony.Lee, paul.moore, steve.dower, tim.golden, zach.ware
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: On Windows, os.stat() can fail if called while another process is creating or deleting the file
versions: Python 3.10

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<https://bugs.python.org/issue46785>
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