The Python/C API, Release 3.13.
If a code path is very unlikely code but can be reached under exceptional case, this macro must not be used.
For example, under low memory condition or if a system call returns a value out of the expected range. In this
case, it’s better to report the error to the caller. If the error cannot be reported to caller, Py_FatalError()
can be used.
Added in version 3.7.
Py_UNUSED(arg)
Use this for unused arguments in a function definition to silence compiler warnings. Example: int func(int
a, int Py_UNUSED(b)) { return a; }.
Added in version 3.4.
PyDoc_STRVAR(name, str)
Creates a variable with name name that can be used in docstrings. If Python is built without docstrings, the
value will be empty.
Use PyDoc_STRVAR for docstrings to support building Python without docstrings, as specified in PEP 7.
Example:
PyDoc_STRVAR(pop_doc, "Remove and return the rightmost element.");
static PyMethodDef deque_methods[] = {
// ...
{"pop", (PyCFunction)deque_pop, METH_NOARGS, pop_doc},
// ...
}
PyDoc_STR(str)
Creates a docstring for the given input string or an empty string if docstrings are disabled.
Use PyDoc_STR in specifying docstrings to support building Python without docstrings, as specified in PEP
7.
Example:
static PyMethodDef pysqlite_row_methods[] = {
{"keys", (PyCFunction)pysqlite_row_keys, METH_NOARGS,
PyDoc_STR("Returns the keys of the row.")},
{NULL, NULL}
};
1.4 Objects, Types and Reference Counts
Most Python/C API functions have one or more arguments as well as a return value of type PyObject*. This type
is a pointer to an opaque data type representing an arbitrary Python object. Since all Python object types are treated
the same way by the Python language in most situations (e.g., assignments, scope rules, and argument passing), it
is only fitting that they should be represented by a single C type. Almost all Python objects live on the heap: you
never declare an automatic or static variable of type PyObject, only pointer variables of type PyObject* can be
declared. The sole exception are the type objects; since these must never be deallocated, they are typically static
PyTypeObject objects.
All Python objects (even Python integers) have a type and a reference count. An object’s type determines what kind
of object it is (e.g., an integer, a list, or a user-defined function; there are many more as explained in types). For each
of the well-known types there is a macro to check whether an object is of that type; for instance, PyList_Check(a)
is true if (and only if) the object pointed to by a is a Python list.
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1.4.1 Reference Counts
The reference count is important because today’s computers have a finite (and often severely limited) memory size;
it counts how many different places there are that have a strong reference to an object. Such a place could be another
object, or a global (or static) C variable, or a local variable in some C function. When the last strong reference to an
object is released (i.e. its reference count becomes zero), the object is deallocated. If it contains references to other
objects, those references are released. Those other objects may be deallocated in turn, if there are no more references
to them, and so on. (There’s an obvious problem with objects that reference each other here; for now, the solution is
“don’t do that.”)
Reference counts are always manipulated explicitly. The normal way is to use the macro Py_INCREF() to take a new
reference to an object (i.e. increment its reference count by one), and Py_DECREF() to release that reference (i.e.
decrement the reference count by one). The Py_DECREF() macro is considerably more complex than the incref one,
since it must check whether the reference count becomes zero and then cause the object’s deallocator to be called. The
deallocator is a function pointer contained in the object’s type structure. The type-specific deallocator takes care of
releasing references for other objects contained in the object if this is a compound object type, such as a list, as well as
performing any additional finalization that’s needed. There’s no chance that the reference count can overflow; at least
as many bits are used to hold the reference count as there are distinct memory locations in virtual memory (assuming
sizeof(Py_ssize_t) >= sizeof(void*)). Thus, the reference count increment is a simple operation.
It is not necessary to hold a strong reference (i.e. increment the reference count) for every local variable that contains
a pointer to an object. In theory, the object’s reference count goes up by one when the variable is made to point to
it and it goes down by one when the variable goes out of scope. However, these two cancel each other out, so at the
end the reference count hasn’t changed. The only real reason to use the reference count is to prevent the object from
being deallocated as long as our variable is pointing to it. If we know that there is at least one other reference to the
object that lives at least as long as our variable, there is no need to take a new strong reference (i.e. increment the
reference count) temporarily. An important situation where this arises is in objects that are passed as arguments to
C functions in an extension module that are called from Python; the call mechanism guarantees to hold a reference
to every argument for the duration of the call.
However, a common pitfall is to extract an object from a list and hold on to it for a while without taking a new
reference. Some other operation might conceivably remove the object from the list, releasing that reference, and
possibly deallocating it. The real danger is that innocent-looking operations may invoke arbitrary Python code which
could do this; there is a code path which allows control to flow back to the user from a Py_DECREF(), so almost any
operation is potentially dangerous.
A safe approach is to always use the generic operations (functions whose name begins with PyObject_, PyNumber_,
PySequence_ or PyMapping_). These operations always create a new strong reference (i.e. increment the reference
count) of the object they return. This leaves the caller with the responsibility to call Py_DECREF() when they are
done with the result; this soon becomes second nature.
Reference Count Details
The reference count behavior of functions in the Python/C API is best explained in terms of ownership of references.
Ownership pertains to references, never to objects (objects are not owned: they are always shared). “Owning a
reference” means being responsible for calling Py_DECREF on it when the reference is no longer needed. Ownership
can also be transferred, meaning that the code that receives ownership of the reference then becomes responsible for
eventually releasing it by calling Py_DECREF() or Py_XDECREF() when it’s no longer needed—or passing on this
responsibility (usually to its caller). When a function passes ownership of a reference on to its caller, the caller is
said to receive a new reference. When no ownership is transferred, the caller is said to borrow the reference. Nothing
needs to be done for a borrowed reference.
Conversely, when a calling function passes in a reference to an object, there are two possibilities: the function steals
a reference to the object, or it does not. Stealing a reference means that when you pass a reference to a function, that
function assumes that it now owns that reference, and you are not responsible for it any longer.
Few functions steal references; the two notable exceptions are PyList_SetItem() and PyTuple_SetItem(),
which steal a reference to the item (but not to the tuple or list into which the item is put!). These functions were
designed to steal a reference because of a common idiom for populating a tuple or list with newly created objects; for
example, the code to create the tuple (1, 2, "three") could look like this (forgetting about error handling for
the moment; a better way to code this is shown below):
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PyObject *t;
t = PyTuple_New(3);
PyTuple_SetItem(t, 0, PyLong_FromLong(1L));
PyTuple_SetItem(t, 1, PyLong_FromLong(2L));
PyTuple_SetItem(t, 2, PyUnicode_FromString("three"));
Here, PyLong_FromLong() returns a new reference which is immediately stolen by PyTuple_SetItem(). When
you want to keep using an object although the reference to it will be stolen, use Py_INCREF() to grab another
reference before calling the reference-stealing function.
Incidentally, PyTuple_SetItem() is the only way to set tuple items; PySequence_SetItem() and
PyObject_SetItem() refuse to do this since tuples are an immutable data type. You should only use
PyTuple_SetItem() for tuples that you are creating yourself.
Equivalent code for populating a list can be written using PyList_New() and PyList_SetItem().
However, in practice, you will rarely use these ways of creating and populating a tuple or list. There’s a generic
function, Py_BuildValue(), that can create most common objects from C values, directed by a format string.
For example, the above two blocks of code could be replaced by the following (which also takes care of the error
checking):
PyObject *tuple, *list;
tuple = Py_BuildValue("(iis)", 1, 2, "three");
list = Py_BuildValue("[iis]", 1, 2, "three");
It is much more common to use PyObject_SetItem() and friends with items whose references you are only
borrowing, like arguments that were passed in to the function you are writing. In that case, their behaviour regarding
references is much saner, since you don’t have to take a new reference just so you can give that reference away (“have
it be stolen”). For example, this function sets all items of a list (actually, any mutable sequence) to a given item:
int
set_all(PyObject *target, PyObject *item)
{
Py_ssize_t i, n;
n = PyObject_Length(target);
if (n < 0)
return -1;
for (i = 0; i < n; i++) {
PyObject *index = PyLong_FromSsize_t(i);
if (!index)
return -1;
if (PyObject_SetItem(target, index, item) < 0) {
Py_DECREF(index);
return -1;
}
Py_DECREF(index);
}
return 0;
}
The situation is slightly different for function return values. While passing a reference to most functions does not
change your ownership responsibilities for that reference, many functions that return a reference to an object give you
ownership of the reference. The reason is simple: in many cases, the returned object is created on the fly, and the
reference you get is the only reference to the object. Therefore, the generic functions that return object references,
like PyObject_GetItem() and PySequence_GetItem(), always return a new reference (the caller becomes the
owner of the reference).
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It is important to realize that whether you own a reference returned by a function depends on which function you call
only — the plumage (the type of the object passed as an argument to the function) doesn’t enter into it! Thus, if you
extract an item from a list using PyList_GetItem(), you don’t own the reference — but if you obtain the same
item from the same list using PySequence_GetItem() (which happens to take exactly the same arguments), you
do own a reference to the returned object.
Here is an example of how you could write a function that computes the sum of the items in a list of integers; once
using PyList_GetItem(), and once using PySequence_GetItem().
long
sum_list(PyObject *list)
{
Py_ssize_t i, n;
long total = 0, value;
PyObject *item;
n = PyList_Size(list);
if (n < 0)
return -1; /* Not a list */
for (i = 0; i < n; i++) {
item = PyList_GetItem(list, i); /* Can't fail */
if (!PyLong_Check(item)) continue; /* Skip non-integers */
value = PyLong_AsLong(item);
if (value == -1 && PyErr_Occurred())
/* Integer too big to fit in a C long, bail out */
return -1;
total += value;
}
return total;
}
long
sum_sequence(PyObject *sequence)
{
Py_ssize_t i, n;
long total = 0, value;
PyObject *item;
n = PySequence_Length(sequence);
if (n < 0)
return -1; /* Has no length */
for (i = 0; i < n; i++) {
item = PySequence_GetItem(sequence, i);
if (item == NULL)
return -1; /* Not a sequence, or other failure */
if (PyLong_Check(item)) {
value = PyLong_AsLong(item);
Py_DECREF(item);
if (value == -1 && PyErr_Occurred())
/* Integer too big to fit in a C long, bail out */
return -1;
total += value;
}
else {
Py_DECREF(item); /* Discard reference ownership */
}
}
return total;
}
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1.4.2 Types
There are few other data types that play a significant role in the Python/C API; most are simple C types such as int,
long, double and char*. A few structure types are used to describe static tables used to list the functions exported
by a module or the data attributes of a new object type, and another is used to describe the value of a complex number.
These will be discussed together with the functions that use them.
type Py_ssize_t
Part of the Stable ABI. A signed integral type such that sizeof(Py_ssize_t) == sizeof(size_t).
C99 doesn’t define such a thing directly (size_t is an unsigned integral type). See PEP 353 for details.
PY_SSIZE_T_MAX is the largest positive value of type Py_ssize_t.
1.5 Exceptions
The Python programmer only needs to deal with exceptions if specific error handling is required; unhandled excep-
tions are automatically propagated to the caller, then to the caller’s caller, and so on, until they reach the top-level
interpreter, where they are reported to the user accompanied by a stack traceback.
For C programmers, however, error checking always has to be explicit. All functions in the Python/C API can raise
exceptions, unless an explicit claim is made otherwise in a function’s documentation. In general, when a function
encounters an error, it sets an exception, discards any object references that it owns, and returns an error indicator.
If not documented otherwise, this indicator is either NULL or -1, depending on the function’s return type. A few
functions return a Boolean true/false result, with false indicating an error. Very few functions return no explicit error
indicator or have an ambiguous return value, and require explicit testing for errors with PyErr_Occurred(). These
exceptions are always explicitly documented.
Exception state is maintained in per-thread storage (this is equivalent to using global storage in an unthreaded appli-
cation). A thread can be in one of two states: an exception has occurred, or not. The function PyErr_Occurred()
can be used to check for this: it returns a borrowed reference to the exception type object when an exception has
occurred, and NULL otherwise. There are a number of functions to set the exception state: PyErr_SetString()
is the most common (though not the most general) function to set the exception state, and PyErr_Clear() clears
the exception state.
The full exception state consists of three objects (all of which can be NULL): the exception type, the corresponding
exception value, and the traceback. These have the same meanings as the Python result of sys.exc_info();
however, they are not the same: the Python objects represent the last exception being handled by a Python try …
except statement, while the C level exception state only exists while an exception is being passed on between C
functions until it reaches the Python bytecode interpreter’s main loop, which takes care of transferring it to sys.
exc_info() and friends.
Note that starting with Python 1.5, the preferred, thread-safe way to access the exception state from Python code
is to call the function sys.exc_info(), which returns the per-thread exception state for Python code. Also, the
semantics of both ways to access the exception state have changed so that a function which catches an exception will
save and restore its thread’s exception state so as to preserve the exception state of its caller. This prevents common
bugs in exception handling code caused by an innocent-looking function overwriting the exception being handled; it
also reduces the often unwanted lifetime extension for objects that are referenced by the stack frames in the traceback.
As a general principle, a function that calls another function to perform some task should check whether the called
function raised an exception, and if so, pass the exception state on to its caller. It should discard any object references
that it owns, and return an error indicator, but it should not set another exception — that would overwrite the exception
that was just raised, and lose important information about the exact cause of the error.
A simple example of detecting exceptions and passing them on is shown in the sum_sequence() example above.
It so happens that this example doesn’t need to clean up any owned references when it detects an error. The following
example function shows some error cleanup. First, to remind you why you like Python, we show the equivalent
Python code:
def incr_item(dict, key):
try:
item = dict[key]
(continues on next page)
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