$ python3 -c 'import codecs; from io import BytesIO; codecs.getwriter("big5")(BytesIO()).reset()'
Segmentation fault (core dumped)
[Exit 139]

Happens for all the multibyte codecs:
broken_stream_codecs = {
"big5", "big5hkscs", "cp932", "cp949", "cp950",
"euc_jp", "euc_jis_2004", "euc_jisx0213", "euc_kr",
"gb2312", "gbk", "gb18030", "hz",
"iso2022_jp", "iso2022_jp_1", "iso2022_jp_2", "iso2022_jp_2004",
"iso2022_jp_3", "iso2022_jp_ext", "iso2022_kr",
"johab", "shift_jis", "shift_jis_2004", "shift_jisx0213",
}

These codecs also share the property that their StreamReader.read() methods do not accept the second “chars” parameter:

>>> codecs.getreader("big5")(BytesIO()).read(1, 1)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: read expected at most 1 arguments, got 2

This is also present in the latest Python 3.6.

I'm going to work on providing a patch for this, unless someone else already is

Happens for all the multibyte codecs: (...)

All these codecs share the same C implementation: the "CJK" codecs.

The bug was introduced in Python 3.4 by my huge changeset d621bdaed7c3: Issue "bpo-17693: CJK encoders now use the new Unicode API (PEP-393)".

It looks like there was no test for this specific bug :-/ Calling reset() just after creating a StreamReader object.

Attached patch should fix the crash.

@Aaron1011: Can you please try to write a patch adding a unit test to test_codecs reproducing the crash?

It looks like there was no test for this specific bug :-/ Calling reset() just after creating a StreamReader object.

Oops: StreamWriter, not StreamReader.

Perhaps this test case proposed in my patch for bpo-13881 could be useful:

+def test_writer_reuse(self):
+ """StreamWriter should be reusable after reset"""

Looks like that is where my “broken_stream_codecs” list from the original post came from.

The included patch fixes the issue, and modifies the existing unittest to prevent a future regression.

The patch corrects an issue where the 'pending' struct field was NULL, but was used as the input to multibytecodec_encode anyay.

cjk_codecs_reset.patch LGTM.

The patch didn't get attached for some reason. It's attached now.

Aaron: Your version of the fix immediately returns None, while Victor’s tries to encode an empty string (if I understand it correctly). I imagine this shortcut could be slightly more efficient, but is it always correct?

In any case, Aaron’s test looks okay to me.

Aaron: Your version of the fix immediately returns None, while Victor’s tries to encode an empty string (if I understand it correctly).

Aaron patch is better. I misunderstood the code. reset() always return None, the empty string is unused in my patch.

fix-multibytecodec-segfault.patch: please write a _new_ test mentionning this issue to check for non regression.

I've added a test case to exercise reset()

New changeset 35a6fe0e2b27 by Victor Stinner in branch '3.4':
Closes bpo-23247: Fix a crash in the StreamWriter.reset() of CJK codecs
https://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/35a6fe0e2b27

@aaron Hill: Thanks for your patch! I only kept the minimal test of your patch. If you want to enhance the test suite, you may write new test to test the behaviour of reset(). I prefer to only commit the minimum patch.

@martin: Thanks for your report. The issue is now fixed.