The garbage collector is not behaving consistently across platforms for python 2.7.11.

I realize that the example code and style is not proper :-)

On the Mac OSX platform this code runs without the garbage collector "cleaning house" and there is no resulting crash from a NULL pointer.  On the Linux platform the garbage collector decides to "clean house" (deallocates the object) resulting in a NULL pointer which is not handled correctly by the c-function code (some legacy stuff) and causes a segmentation fault.

Temporarily disabling the garbage collector and enabling it later on allows a workaround (valid or not) that is consistent on all platforms.

Improper coding and style aside... the issue I am reporting is the inconsistent behaviour of the garbage collector.  I am looking for consistency across platforms (same result on all platforms).  :-)