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<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=Edge" /> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> <title>Reference Counting — Python 2.7.18 documentation</title> <link rel="stylesheet" href="../_static/classic.css" type="text/css" /> <link rel="stylesheet" href="../_static/pygments.css" type="text/css" /> <script type="text/javascript" id="documentation_options" data-url_root="../" src="../_static/documentation_options.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="../_static/jquery.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="../_static/underscore.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="../_static/doctools.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="../_static/language_data.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="../_static/sidebar.js"></script> <link rel="search" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" title="Search within Python 2.7.18 documentation" href="../_static/opensearch.xml"/> <link rel="author" title="About these documents" href="../about.html" /> <link rel="index" title="Index" href="../genindex.html" /> <link rel="search" title="Search" href="../search.html" /> <link rel="copyright" title="Copyright" href="../copyright.html" /> <link rel="next" title="Exception Handling" href="exceptions.html" /> <link rel="prev" title="The Very High Level Layer" href="veryhigh.html" /> <link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/png" href="../_static/py.png" /> <link rel="canonical" href="file:///usr/share/doc/python2.7/html/c-api/refcounting.html" /> <script type="text/javascript" src="../_static/copybutton.js"></script> </head><body> <div id="outdated-warning" style="padding: .5em; text-align: center; background-color: #FFBABA; color: #6A0E0E;"> This document is for an old version of Python that is <a href="https://devguide.python.org/devcycle/#end-of-life-branches">no longer supported</a>. You should install the python3 and python3-doc packages and read the <a href="file:///usr/share/doc/python3-doc/html/c-api/refcounting.html"> Python documentation for the Python3 version packaged in this release</a>. </div> <div class="related" role="navigation" aria-label="related navigation"> <h3>Navigation</h3> <ul> <li class="right" style="margin-right: 10px"> <a href="../genindex.html" title="General Index" accesskey="I">index</a></li> <li class="right" > <a href="../py-modindex.html" title="Python Module Index" >modules</a> |</li> <li class="right" > <a href="exceptions.html" title="Exception Handling" accesskey="N">next</a> |</li> <li class="right" > <a href="veryhigh.html" title="The Very High Level Layer" accesskey="P">previous</a> |</li> <li><img src="../_static/py.png" alt="" style="vertical-align: middle; margin-top: -1px"/></li> <li><a href="https://www.python.org/">Python</a> »</li> <li> <a href="../index.html">Python 2.7.18 documentation</a> » </li> <li class="nav-item nav-item-1"><a href="index.html" accesskey="U">Python/C API Reference Manual</a> »</li> </ul> </div> <div class="document"> <div class="documentwrapper"> <div class="bodywrapper"> <div class="body" role="main"> <div class="section" id="reference-counting"> <span id="countingrefs"></span><h1>Reference Counting<a class="headerlink" href="#reference-counting" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h1> <p>The macros in this section are used for managing reference counts of Python objects.</p> <dl class="function"> <dt id="c.Py_INCREF"> void <code class="descname">Py_INCREF</code><span class="sig-paren">(</span><a class="reference internal" href="structures.html#c.PyObject" title="PyObject">PyObject</a><em> *o</em><span class="sig-paren">)</span><a class="headerlink" href="#c.Py_INCREF" title="Permalink to this definition">¶</a></dt> <dd><p>Increment the reference count for object <em>o</em>. The object must not be <em>NULL</em>; if you aren’t sure that it isn’t <em>NULL</em>, use <a class="reference internal" href="#c.Py_XINCREF" title="Py_XINCREF"><code class="xref c c-func docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">Py_XINCREF()</span></code></a>.</p> </dd></dl> <dl class="function"> <dt id="c.Py_XINCREF"> void <code class="descname">Py_XINCREF</code><span class="sig-paren">(</span><a class="reference internal" href="structures.html#c.PyObject" title="PyObject">PyObject</a><em> *o</em><span class="sig-paren">)</span><a class="headerlink" href="#c.Py_XINCREF" title="Permalink to this definition">¶</a></dt> <dd><p>Increment the reference count for object <em>o</em>. The object may be <em>NULL</em>, in which case the macro has no effect.</p> </dd></dl> <dl class="function"> <dt id="c.Py_DECREF"> void <code class="descname">Py_DECREF</code><span class="sig-paren">(</span><a class="reference internal" href="structures.html#c.PyObject" title="PyObject">PyObject</a><em> *o</em><span class="sig-paren">)</span><a class="headerlink" href="#c.Py_DECREF" title="Permalink to this definition">¶</a></dt> <dd><p>Decrement the reference count for object <em>o</em>. The object must not be <em>NULL</em>; if you aren’t sure that it isn’t <em>NULL</em>, use <a class="reference internal" href="#c.Py_XDECREF" title="Py_XDECREF"><code class="xref c c-func docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">Py_XDECREF()</span></code></a>. If the reference count reaches zero, the object’s type’s deallocation function (which must not be <em>NULL</em>) is invoked.</p> <div class="admonition warning"> <p class="first admonition-title">Warning</p> <p class="last">The deallocation function can cause arbitrary Python code to be invoked (e.g. when a class instance with a <a class="reference internal" href="../reference/datamodel.html#object.__del__" title="object.__del__"><code class="xref py py-meth docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">__del__()</span></code></a> method is deallocated). While exceptions in such code are not propagated, the executed code has free access to all Python global variables. This means that any object that is reachable from a global variable should be in a consistent state before <a class="reference internal" href="#c.Py_DECREF" title="Py_DECREF"><code class="xref c c-func docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">Py_DECREF()</span></code></a> is invoked. For example, code to delete an object from a list should copy a reference to the deleted object in a temporary variable, update the list data structure, and then call <a class="reference internal" href="#c.Py_DECREF" title="Py_DECREF"><code class="xref c c-func docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">Py_DECREF()</span></code></a> for the temporary variable.</p> </div> </dd></dl> <dl class="function"> <dt id="c.Py_XDECREF"> void <code class="descname">Py_XDECREF</code><span class="sig-paren">(</span><a class="reference internal" href="structures.html#c.PyObject" title="PyObject">PyObject</a><em> *o</em><span class="sig-paren">)</span><a class="headerlink" href="#c.Py_XDECREF" title="Permalink to this definition">¶</a></dt> <dd><p>Decrement the reference count for object <em>o</em>. The object may be <em>NULL</em>, in which case the macro has no effect; otherwise the effect is the same as for <a class="reference internal" href="#c.Py_DECREF" title="Py_DECREF"><code class="xref c c-func docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">Py_DECREF()</span></code></a>, and the same warning applies.</p> </dd></dl> <dl class="function"> <dt id="c.Py_CLEAR"> void <code class="descname">Py_CLEAR</code><span class="sig-paren">(</span><a class="reference internal" href="structures.html#c.PyObject" title="PyObject">PyObject</a><em> *o</em><span class="sig-paren">)</span><a class="headerlink" href="#c.Py_CLEAR" title="Permalink to this definition">¶</a></dt> <dd><p>Decrement the reference count for object <em>o</em>. The object may be <em>NULL</em>, in which case the macro has no effect; otherwise the effect is the same as for <a class="reference internal" href="#c.Py_DECREF" title="Py_DECREF"><code class="xref c c-func docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">Py_DECREF()</span></code></a>, except that the argument is also set to <em>NULL</em>. The warning for <a class="reference internal" href="#c.Py_DECREF" title="Py_DECREF"><code class="xref c c-func docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">Py_DECREF()</span></code></a> does not apply with respect to the object passed because the macro carefully uses a temporary variable and sets the argument to <em>NULL</em> before decrementing its reference count.</p> <p>It is a good idea to use this macro whenever decrementing the value of a variable that might be traversed during garbage collection.</p> <div class="versionadded"> <p><span class="versionmodified">New in version 2.4.</span></p> </div> </dd></dl> <p>The following functions are for runtime dynamic embedding of Python: <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">Py_IncRef(PyObject</span> <span class="pre">*o)</span></code>, <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">Py_DecRef(PyObject</span> <span class="pre">*o)</span></code>. They are simply exported function versions of <a class="reference internal" href="#c.Py_XINCREF" title="Py_XINCREF"><code class="xref c c-func docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">Py_XINCREF()</span></code></a> and <a class="reference internal" href="#c.Py_XDECREF" title="Py_XDECREF"><code class="xref c c-func docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">Py_XDECREF()</span></code></a>, respectively.</p> <p>The following functions or macros are only for use within the interpreter core: <code class="xref c c-func docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">_Py_Dealloc()</span></code>, <code class="xref c c-func docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">_Py_ForgetReference()</span></code>, <code class="xref c c-func docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">_Py_NewReference()</span></code>, as well as the global variable <code class="xref c c-data docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">_Py_RefTotal</span></code>.</p> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="sphinxsidebar" role="navigation" aria-label="main navigation"> <div class="sphinxsidebarwrapper"> <h4>Previous topic</h4> <p class="topless"><a href="veryhigh.html" title="previous chapter">The Very High Level Layer</a></p> <h4>Next topic</h4> <p class="topless"><a href="exceptions.html" title="next chapter">Exception Handling</a></p> <div role="note" aria-label="source link"> <h3>This Page</h3> <ul class="this-page-menu"> <li><a href="../_sources/c-api/refcounting.rst.txt" rel="nofollow">Show Source</a></li> </ul> </div> <div id="searchbox" style="display: none" role="search"> <h3>Quick search</h3> <div class="searchformwrapper"> <form class="search" action="../search.html" method="get"> <input type="text" name="q" /> <input type="submit" value="Go" /> <input type="hidden" name="check_keywords" value="yes" /> <input type="hidden" name="area" value="default" /> </form> </div> </div> <script type="text/javascript">$('#searchbox').show(0);</script> </div> </div> <div class="clearer"></div> </div> <div class="related" role="navigation" aria-label="related navigation"> <h3>Navigation</h3> <ul> <li class="right" style="margin-right: 10px"> <a href="../genindex.html" title="General Index" >index</a></li> <li class="right" > <a href="../py-modindex.html" title="Python Module Index" >modules</a> |</li> <li class="right" > <a href="exceptions.html" title="Exception Handling" >next</a> |</li> <li class="right" > <a href="veryhigh.html" title="The Very High Level Layer" >previous</a> |</li> <li><img src="../_static/py.png" alt="" style="vertical-align: middle; margin-top: -1px"/></li> <li><a href="https://www.python.org/">Python</a> »</li> <li> <a href="../index.html">Python 2.7.18 documentation</a> » </li> <li class="nav-item nav-item-1"><a href="index.html" >Python/C API Reference Manual</a> »</li> </ul> </div> <div class="footer"> © <a href="../copyright.html">Copyright</a> 1990-2024, Python Software Foundation. <br /> The Python Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation. <a href="https://www.python.org/psf/donations/">Please donate.</a> <br /> Last updated on December 09, 2024. <a href="../bugs.html">Found a bug</a>? <br /> Created using <a href="http://sphinx.pocoo.org/">Sphinx</a> 1.8.5. </div> </body> </html>