WeakSet has a bug in its '__len__' method, where it performs iteration though 'self.data' without ensuring _IterationGuard.

This leads to some hard to catch errors with the following traceback:


  builtins.RuntimeError: Set changed size during iteration

    File /usr/lib64/python3.2/_weakrefset.py, line 66, in __len__
        return sum(x() is not None for x in self.data)
    File /usr/lib64/python3.2/_weakrefset.py, line 66, in <genexpr>
        return sum(x() is not None for x in self.data)

I can't find a way to reproduce as a unit test.
Here is a patch making __len__ O(1) as well (instead of O(n)). Could you try it?

(note : AFAICT, a similar issue exists for weak dicts)

New patch addressing similar issue with weak dicts, and adding more tests.

Yes, I couldn't reproduce it either.  However it frequently occurs on our buildbot, so tomorrow I'll give you an update if this patch resolves the issue or not.

In any way, your patch fixes the current implementation at least from the performance perspective.  I think it should be applied to 'WeakValueDictionary.__len__' as well.

Thanks!

As expected, it seems that the patch fixes the issue.

New changeset 1cd0688ff004 by Antoine Pitrou in branch '3.2':
Issue #14159: Fix the len() of weak containers (WeakSet, WeakKeyDictionary, WeakValueDictionary) to return a better approximation when some objects are dead or dying.
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/1cd0688ff004

New changeset b1b2a29d3d81 by Antoine Pitrou in branch 'default':
Issue #14159: Fix the len() of weak containers (WeakSet, WeakKeyDictionary, WeakValueDictionary) to return a better approximation when some objects are dead or dying.
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/b1b2a29d3d81

New changeset b6acfbe2bdbe by Antoine Pitrou in branch '2.7':
Issue #14159: Fix the len() of weak sets to return a better approximation when some objects are dead or dying.
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/b6acfbe2bdbe

2.7 didn't have the weak dict issue, but I still backported the tests there. Closing, should be fixed now. Thanks for reporting!