Greg Ewing wrote: >> Both should be optimized away by the compiler. > > How? I don't see how the compiler can know either of > those things.
As you then discussed: it can do that for local variables (it might even *warn* about the redundant assignment, though). OTOH, for local variables, it might be of least interest: it's usually pretty clear whether they will be accessed again or not. For global variables, I'm completely in favour of releasing them through Py_CLEAR always. For pointer that live on the heap, Py_[X]DECREF is usually done because either a) the memory block containing the pointer is about to be released (e.g. when a tuple is deallocated), or b) the pointer is about to be changed to point to something else (e.g. a setitem operation) In either case, there isn't much value to clearing the pointer: In case b), the value will change right away again, and in case a), if anybody still has a pointer to the block, we are in trouble, and clearing the pointer likely doesn't help in finding the trouble. Regards, Martin _______________________________________________ Python-3000 mailing list Python-3000@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-3000 Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-3000/archive%40mail-archive.com
