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1.10.2 Ownership Rules

Whenever an object reference is passed into or out of a function, it is part of the function's interface specification whether ownership is transferred with the reference or not.

Most functions that return a reference to an object pass on ownership with the reference. In particular, all functions whose function it is to create a new object, such as `PyInt_FromLong()` and `Py_BuildValue()`, pass ownership to the receiver. Even if the object is not actually new, you still receive ownership of a new reference to that object. For instance, `PyInt_FromLong()` maintains a cache of popular values and can return a reference to a cached item.

Many functions that extract objects from other objects also transfer ownership with the reference, for instance `PyObject_GetAttrString()`. The picture is less clear, here, however, since a few common routines are exceptions: `PyTuple_GetItem()`, `PyList_GetItem()`, `PyDict_GetItem()`, and `PyDict_GetItemString()` all return references that you borrow from the tuple, list or dictionary.

The function `PyImport_AddModule()` also returns a borrowed reference, even though it may actually create the object it returns: this is possible because an owned reference to the object is stored in `sys.modules`.

When you pass an object reference into another function, in general, the function borrows the reference from you -- if it needs to store it, it will use `Py_INCREF()` to become an independent owner. There are exactly two important exceptions to this rule: `PyTuple_SetItem()` and `PyList_SetItem()`. These functions take over ownership of the item passed to them -- even if they fail! (Note that `PyDict_SetItem()` and friends don't take over ownership -- they are ``normal.'')

When a C function is called from Python, it borrows references to its arguments from the caller. The caller owns a reference to the object, so the borrowed reference's lifetime is guaranteed until the function returns. Only when such a borrowed reference must be stored or passed on, it must be turned into an owned reference by calling `Py_INCREF()`.

The object reference returned from a C function that is called from Python must be an owned reference -- ownership is tranferred from the function to its caller.