On Solaris 10 (Solaris 10 5/08 s10x_u5wos_10 X86),
with python 2.5 (Python 2.5.2 (r252:60911, Sep  8 2008, 16:53:36) [C] on
sunos5),

tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile creates - as advertised - a temporary file.

After closing this file object (e.g. by exiting the python process), the
temporary file is indeed removed.

But if you just kill the python process, the temporary file is not
destroyed.

This behavior is different on Red Hat Linux and MS Vista, on these OSes
the temporary file is removed.

A snapshot to illustrate the behavior:

[moto /]# python
Python 2.5.2 (r252:60911, Sep  8 2008, 16:53:36) [C] on sunos5
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import os, tempfile
>>> f = tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile()
>>> f.name
'/tmp/tmpfHraUd'
>>> os.getpid()
4403
>>> x = "With root priveleges, I execute: 'kill 4403'"
>>>
>>> Terminated
[moto /]#

[Replaces msg 79727]


On Solaris 10 (Solaris 10 5/08 s10x_u5wos_10 X86),
with python 2.5 (Python 2.5.2 (r252:60911, Sep  8 2008, 16:53:36) [C] on
sunos5),

tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile creates - as advertised - a temporary file.

After closing this file object (e.g. by exiting the python process), the
temporary file is indeed removed.

But if you just kill the python process, the temporary file is not
destroyed.

This behavior is different on Red Hat Linux and MS Vista, on these OSes
the temporary file is removed.

A snapshot to illustrate the behavior:

[moto /]# python
Python 2.5.2 (r252:60911, Sep  8 2008, 16:53:36) [C] on sunos5
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import os, tempfile
>>> f = tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile()
>>> f.name
'/tmp/tmpfHraUd'
>>> os.getpid()
4403
>>> x = "With root priveleges, I execute: 'kill 4403'"
>>>
>>> Terminated
[moto /]# ls /tmp/tmpfHraUd
/tmp/tmpfHraUd
[moto /]#

Martin, do you have time to confirm this problem?
Failure of (Named)TemporaryFile to remove the file on shutdown should be
considered a serious issue.

Shouldn't this get looked at as it's high priority, albeit over a year old?

I can reproduce this on Ubuntu with Python 2.7 and 3.2.

Unfortunately, I typically don't have time to consider the priority of issues.

However, in the specific case, I also fail to see the bug. Where does it say that they are supposed to be deleted when the process is killed, and what mechanism specifically is supposed to actually perform the deletion?

I can't think of any way that you might be able to implement the behavior being requested here.

Instead, if you don't want to leave files lying around, use TemporaryFile instead of NamedTemporaryFile.

Perhaps the documentation for NamedTemporary file could be updated to explain this limitation, though.

> I can't think of any way that you might be able to implement the behavior being requested here.

Thanks for the confirmation; lowering the priority then.

It would, of course, be possible to improve quality by registering an atexit handler. Which, of course, would be futile in case of a SIGKILL or system crash.

> Where does it say that they are supposed to be deleted when the process > is killed,

Well, it is more of a "natural expectation" I guess.

> and what mechanism specifically is supposed to actually perform the
> deletion?

That's not the kind of questions users ask themselves.
If the process shutdown is greatful, either __del__ or a weakref callback is adequate. We probably can't do anything for brutal killings, though.

Ok, my bad. The implementation already has a __del__ method.