[GitHub] taliesinb opened a new issue #12394: C API documentation often doesn't mention returned pointer lifetimes

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taliesinb opened a new issue #12394: C API documentation often doesn't mention returned pointer lifetimes
URL: https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/issues/12394
 
 
   Take a function from the C API like `MXNDArrayGetShape`, which sets a pointer to shape data of an `NDArray`. 
   
   It is not documented at https://mxnet.incubator.apache.org/doxygen/c__api_8h.html#a2035651f4392d249d1b904d5eb0c3406 how long this data lasts, where and how it as allocated, and whether the caller is responsible for freeing it.
   
   By chasing things down to `MXAPIThreadLocalEntry` I see that this shape buffer is thread-local and will last until the next call to either `MXNDArrayGetShape` or `MXSymbolInferShape`. That's an important fact to document to be able to use the API correctly! If this is documented already somewhere, that's good, but then a reference to this section should be included in a doxygen `warn` field of `MXNDArrayGetShape` etc. 

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