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[3.8] bpo-40895: Update weakref documentation to remove old warnings (GH-20687) (GH-20792)
The doccumentation at https://docs.python.org/3.10/library/weakref.html cautions that the `WeakKeyDictionary` and `WeakValueDictionary` are susceptible to the problem of dictionary mutation during iteration. These notes present the user with a problem that has no easy solution. I dug into the implementation and found that fortunately, Antoine Pitrou already addressed this challenge (10 years ago!) by introducing an `_IterationGuard` context manager to the implementation, which delays mutation while an iteration is in progress. I asked for confirmation and @pitrou agreed that these notes could be removed: c1baa601e2b558deb690edfdf334fceee3b03327GH-commitcomment-39514438. (cherry picked from commit 1642c0e) Co-authored-by: Daniel Fortunov <[email protected]> Automerge-Triggered-By: @pitrou
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Doc/library/weakref.rst

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@@ -163,13 +163,6 @@ Extension types can easily be made to support weak references; see
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application without adding attributes to those objects. This can be especially
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useful with objects that override attribute accesses.
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.. note::
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Caution: Because a :class:`WeakKeyDictionary` is built on top of a Python
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dictionary, it must not change size when iterating over it. This can be
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difficult to ensure for a :class:`WeakKeyDictionary` because actions
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performed by the program during iteration may cause items in the
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dictionary to vanish "by magic" (as a side effect of garbage collection).
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:class:`WeakKeyDictionary` objects have an additional method that
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exposes the internal references directly. The references are not guaranteed to
@@ -189,13 +182,6 @@ than needed.
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Mapping class that references values weakly. Entries in the dictionary will be
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discarded when no strong reference to the value exists any more.
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.. note::
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Caution: Because a :class:`WeakValueDictionary` is built on top of a Python
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dictionary, it must not change size when iterating over it. This can be
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difficult to ensure for a :class:`WeakValueDictionary` because actions performed
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by the program during iteration may cause items in the dictionary to vanish "by
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magic" (as a side effect of garbage collection).
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:class:`WeakValueDictionary` objects have an additional method that has the
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same issues as the :meth:`keyrefs` method of :class:`WeakKeyDictionary`

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