python-peps/pep-0205.txt

PEP: 205
Title: Weak References
Version: $Revision$
Owner: Fred L. Drake, Jr. <fdrake@acm.org>
Python-Version: 2.1
Status: Incomplete
Type: Standards Track
Post-History: 

Motivation

    There are two basic applications for weak references which have
    been noted by Python programmers: object caches and reduction of
    pain from circular references.

    Caches (weak dictionaries)

        There is a need to allow objects to be maintained to represent
        external state, mapping a single instance to the external
        reality, where allowing multiple instances to be mapped to the
        same external resource would create unnecessary difficulty
        maintaining synchronization among instances.  In these cases,
        a common idiom is to support a cache of instances; a factory
        function is used to return either a new or existing instance.

        The difficulty in this approach is that one of two things must
        be tolerated: either the cache grows without bound, or there
        needs to be explicit management of the cache elsewhere in the
        application.  The later can be very tedious and leads to more
        code than is really necessary to solve the problem at hand,
        and the former can be unacceptable for long-running processes
        or even relatively short processes with substantial memory
        requirements.

        - External objects that need to be represented by a single
          instance, no matter how many internal users there are.  This
          can be useful for representing files that need to be written
          back to disk in whole rather than locked & modified for
          every use.

        - Objects which are expensive to create, but may be needed by
          multiple internal consumers.  Similar to the first case, but
          not necessarily bound to external resources, and possibly
          not an issue for shared state.  Weak references are only
          useful in this case if there is some flavor of "soft"
          references or if there is a high likelihood that users of
          individual objects will overlap in lifespan.

    Circular references

        - DOMs require a huge amount of circular (to parent & document
          nodes), but most of these aren't useful.  Using weak
          references allows applications to hold onto less of the tree
          without a lot of difficulty.  This might be especially
          useful in the context of something like xml.dom.pulldom.


Weak References in Java

    http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/docs/api/java/lang/ref/package-summary.html

    Java provides three forms of weak references, and one interesting
    helper class.  The three forms are called "weak", "soft", and
    "phantom" references.  The relevant classes are defined in the
    java.lang.ref package.

    For each of the reference types, there is an option to add the
    reference to a queue when it is invalidated by the memory
    allocator.  The primary purpose of this facility seems to be that
    it allows larger structures to be composed to incorporate
    weak-reference semantics without having to impose substantial
    additional locking requirements.  For instance, it would not be
    difficult to use this facility to create a "weak" hash table which
    removes keys and referents when a reference is no longer used
    elsewhere.  Using weak references for the objects without some
    sort of notification queue for invalidations leads to much more
    tedious implementation of the various operations required on hash
    tables.  This can be a performance bottleneck if deallocations of
    the stored objects are infrequent.

    Java's "weak" references are most like Diane Hackborn's old vref
    proposal: a reference object refers to a single Python object,
    but does not own a reference to that object.  When that object is
    deallocated, the reference object is invalidated.  Users of the
    reference object can easily determine that the reference has been
    invalidated, or a NullObjectDereferenceError can be raised when
    an attempt is made to use the referred-to object.

    The "soft" references are similar, but are not invalidated as soon
    as all other references to the referred-to object have been
    released.  The "soft" reference does own a reference, but allows
    the memory allocator to free the referent if the memory is needed
    elsewhere.  It is not clear whether this means soft references are
    released before the malloc() implementation calls sbrk() or its
    equivalent, or if soft references are only cleared when malloc()
    returns NULL.

    XXX -- Need to figure out what phantom references are all about.

    Unlike the other two reference types, "phantom" references must be
    associated with an invalidation queue.


Previous Weak Reference Work in Python

    Dianne Hackborn's proposed something called "virtual references".
    'vref' objects were very similar to java.lang.ref.WeakReference
    objects, except there was no equivalent to the invalidation
    queues.  Implementing a "weak dictionary" would be just as
    difficult as using only weak references (without the invalidation
    queue) in Java.  Information on this has disappeared from the Web.
    Original discussion occurred in the comp.lang.python newsgroup; a
    good archive of that may turn up something more.

    Marc-Andr<64> Lemburg's mx.Proxy package.  These Web pages appear to
    be unavailable at the moment.

        http://starship.python.net/crew/lemburg/

    The weakdict module by Dieter Maurer is implemented in C and
    Python.  It appears that the Web pages have not been updated since
    Python 1.5.2a, so I'm not yet sure if the implementation is
    compatible with Python 2.0.

        http://www.handshake.de/~dieter/weakdict.html

    PyWeakReference by Alex Shindich:

        http://sourceforge.net/projects/pyweakreference/


Possible Applications

    PyGTK+ bindings?

    Tkinter -- could avoid circular references by using weak
    references from widgets to their parents.  Objects won't be
    discarded any sooner in the typical case, but there won't be so
    much dependence on the programmer calling .destroy() before
    releasing a reference.  This would mostly benefit long-running
    applications.

    DOM trees?


Proposed Implementation

    XXX -- Not yet.


Appendix -- Dianne Hackborn's vref proposal (1995)

    [This has been indented and paragraphs reflowed, but there have be
    no content changes.  --Fred]

    Proposal: Virtual References

    In an attempt to partly address the recurring discussion
    concerning reference counting vs. garbage collection, I would like
    to propose an extension to Python which should help in the
    creation of "well structured" cyclic graphs.  In particular, it
    should allow at least trees with parent back-pointers and
    doubly-linked lists to be created without worry about cycles.

    The basic mechanism I'd like to propose is that of a "virtual
    reference," or a "vref" from here on out.  A vref is essentially a
    handle on an object that does not increment the object's reference
    count.  This means that holding a vref on an object will not keep
    the object from being destroyed.  This would allow the Python
    programmer, for example, to create the aforementioned tree
    structure tree structure, which is automatically destroyed when it
    is no longer in use -- by making all of the parent back-references
    into vrefs, they no longer create reference cycles which keep the
    tree from being destroyed.

    In order to implement this mechanism, the Python core must ensure
    that no -real- pointers are ever left referencing objects that no
    longer exist.  The implementation I would like to propose involves
    two basic additions to the current Python system:

    1. A new "vref" type, through which the Python programmer creates
       and manipulates virtual references.  Internally, it is
       basically a C-level Python object with a pointer to the Python
       object it is a reference to.  Unlike all other Python code,
       however, it does not change the reference count of this object.
       In addition, it includes two pointers to implement a
       doubly-linked list, which is used below.

    2. The addition of a new field to the basic Python object
       [PyObject_Head in object.h], which is either NULL, or points to
       the head of a list of all vref objects that reference it.  When
       a vref object attaches itself to another object, it adds itself
       to this linked list.  Then, if an object with any vrefs on it
       is deallocated, it may walk this list and ensure that all of
       the vrefs on it point to some safe value, e.g. Nothing.


    This implementation should hopefully have a minimal impact on the
    current Python core -- when no vrefs exist, it should only add one
    pointer to all objects, and a check for a NULL pointer every time
    an object is deallocated.

    Back at the Python language level, I have considered two possible
    semantics for the vref object --

    ==> Pointer semantics:

      In this model, a vref behaves essentially like a Python-level
      pointer; the Python program must explicitly dereference the vref
      to manipulate the actual object it references.

      An example vref module using this model could include the
      function "new"; When used as 'MyVref = vref.new(MyObject)', it
      returns a new vref object such that that MyVref.object ==
      MyObject.  MyVref.object would then change to Nothing if
      MyObject is ever deallocated.

      For a concrete example, we may introduce some new C-style syntax:

      & -- unary operator, creates a vref on an object, same as vref.new().
      * -- unary operator, dereference a vref, same as VrefObject.object.

      We can then define:

      1.     type(&MyObject) == vref.VrefType
      2.        *(&MyObject) == MyObject
      3. (*(&MyObject)).attr == MyObject.attr
      4.          &&MyObject == Nothing
      5.           *MyObject -> exception

      Rule #4 is subtle, but comes about because we have made a vref
      to (a vref with no real references).  Thus the outer vref is
      cleared to Nothing when the inner one inevitably disappears.

    ==> Proxy semantics:

      In this model, the Python programmer manipulates vref objects
      just as if she were manipulating the object it is a reference
      of.  This is accomplished by implementing the vref so that all
      operations on it are redirected to its referenced object.  With
      this model, the dereference operator (*) no longer makes sense;
      instead, we have only the reference operator (&), and define:

      1.  type(&MyObject) == type(MyObject)
      2.        &MyObject == MyObject
      3. (&MyObject).attr == MyObject.attr
      4.       &&MyObject == MyObject

      Again, rule #4 is important -- here, the outer vref is in fact a
      reference to the original object, and -not- the inner vref.
      This is because all operations applied to a vref actually apply
      to its object, so that creating a vref of a vref actually
      results in creating a vref of the latter's object.

    The first, pointer semantics, has the advantage that it would be
    very easy to implement; the vref type is extremely simple,
    requiring at minimum a single attribute, object, and a function to
    create a reference.

    However, I really like the proxy semantics.  Not only does it put
    less of a burden on the Python programmer, but it allows you to do
    nice things like use a vref anywhere you would use the actual
    object.  Unfortunately, it would probably an extreme pain, if not
    practically impossible, to implement in the current Python
    implementation.  I do have some thoughts, though, on how to do
    this, if it seems interesting; one possibility is to introduce new
    type-checking functions which handle the vref.  This would
    hopefully older C modules which don't expect vrefs to simply
    return a type error, until they can be fixed.

    Finally, there are some other additional capabilities that this
    system could provide.  One that seems particularily interesting to
    me involves allowing the Python programmer to add "destructor"
    function to a vref -- this Python function would be called
    immediately prior to the referenced object being deallocated,
    allowing a Python program to invisibly attach itself to another
    object and watch for it to disappear.  This seems neat, though I
    haven't actually come up with any practical uses for it, yet... :)

    -- Dianne


Copyright

    This document has been placed in the public domain.



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