SF patch 576101, by Oren Tirosh: alternative implementation of

interning.  I modified Oren's patch significantly, but the basic idea
and most of the implementation is unchanged.  Interned strings created
with PyString_InternInPlace() are now mortal, and you must keep a
reference to the resulting string around; use the new function
PyString_InternImmortal() to create immortal interned strings.

1 files changed, 4 insertions, 2 deletions

diff --git a/Doc/lib/libfuncs.tex b/Doc/lib/libfuncs.tex
index 1aa59dc75c..a6428da2c4 100644
--- a/Doc/lib/libfuncs.tex
+++ b/Doc/lib/libfuncs.tex
@@ -518,8 +518,10 @@ def my_import(name):
   be done by a pointer compare instead of a string compare.  Normally,
   the names used in Python programs are automatically interned, and
   the dictionaries used to hold module, class or instance attributes
-  have interned keys.  Interned strings are immortal (never get
-  garbage collected).
+  have interned keys.  \versionchanged[Interned strings are not
+  immortal (like they used to be in Python 2.2 and before);
+  you must keep a reference to the return value of \function{intern()}
+  around to benefit from it]{2.3}
 \end{funcdesc}
 
 \begin{funcdesc}{isinstance}{object, classinfo}