Clarification needed in C API arg parsing

[sandrotosi]

BPO	13302
Nosy	@pitrou, @sandrotosi

^{Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.}

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GitHub fields:

assignee = None
closed_at = <Date 2012-01-01.22:44:21.036>
created_at = <Date 2011-10-31.10:42:43.108>
labels = ['docs']
title = 'Clarification needed in C API arg parsing'
updated_at = <Date 2012-01-01.22:44:21.034>
user = 'https://github.com/sandrotosi'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2012-01-01.22:44:21.034>
actor = 'sandro.tosi'
assignee = 'docs@python'
closed = True
closed_date = <Date 2012-01-01.22:44:21.036>
closer = 'sandro.tosi'
components = ['Documentation']
creation = <Date 2011-10-31.10:42:43.108>
creator = 'sandro.tosi'
dependencies = []
files = []
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 13302
keywords = []
message_count = 4.0
messages = ['146687', '146777', '150446', '150447']
nosy_count = 4.0
nosy_names = ['pitrou', 'sandro.tosi', 'docs@python', 'python-dev']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'fixed'
stage = 'resolved'
status = 'closed'
superseder = None
type = None
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue13302'
versions = ['Python 2.7']

[sandrotosi]

Hello,
given I can't fully comprehend the user request (sent on docs@ as of http://mail.python.org/pipermail/docs/2011-September/005791.html), I'm just echoing it :

>>
recently I embedded Python into one of my applications, which included
some string parsing.
In my opinion the doc page about parsing arguments
(http://docs.python.org/c-api/arg.html) is missing the information, that
you must not free the returned const char *, like e.g. said here
(http://docs.python.org/c-api/string.html#PyString_AsString).
It was quite confusing for my first, so I would suggest adding this tiny
bit of information.
<<<

[pitrou]

It's already in the 3.x docs (but not 2.x):

“Strings and buffers

These formats allow to access an object as a contiguous chunk of memory. You don’t have to provide raw storage for the returned unicode or bytes area. Also, you won’t have to release any memory yourself, except with the es, es#, et and et# formats.”

http://docs.python.org/dev/c-api/arg.html#strings-and-buffers

[python-dev]

New changeset b2b7104691c9 by Sandro Tosi in branch '2.7':
Issue bpo-13302: backport part of 3ed28f28466f
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/b2b7104691c9

[sandrotosi]

Thanks Antoine for the pointer.