_PyTuple_Resize().  In addition, a change suggested by Jeremy Hylton
to limit the size of the free lists is also merged into this patch.

Charles wrote initially:

"""
Test Case:  run the following code:

class Nothing:
    def __len__(self):
        return 5
    def __getitem__(self, i):
        if i < 3:
            return i
        else:
            raise IndexError, i

def g(a,*b,**c):
    return

for x in xrange(1000000):
    g(*Nothing())


and watch Python's memory use go up and up.


Diagnosis:

The analysis begins with the call to PySequence_Tuple at line 1641 in
ceval.c - the argument to g is seen to be a sequence but not a tuple,
so it needs to be converted from an abstract sequence to a concrete
tuple.  PySequence_Tuple starts off by creating a new tuple of length
5 (line 1122 in abstract.c).  Then at line 1149, since only 3 elements
were assigned, _PyTuple_Resize is called to make the 5-tuple into a
3-tuple.  When we're all done the 3-tuple is decrefed, but rather than
being freed it is placed on the free_tuples cache.

The basic problem is that the 3-tuples are being added to the cache
but never picked up again, since _PyTuple_Resize doesn't make use of
the free_tuples cache.  If you are resizing a 5-tuple to a 3-tuple and
there is already a 3-tuple in free_tuples[3], instead of using this
tuple, _PyTuple_Resize will realloc the 5-tuple to a 3-tuple.  It
would more efficient to use the existing 3-tuple and cache the
5-tuple.

By making _PyTuple_Resize aware of the free_tuples (just as
PyTuple_New), we not only save a few calls to realloc, but also
prevent this misbehavior whereby tuples are being added to the
free_tuples list but never properly "recycled".
"""

And later:

"""
This patch replaces my submission of Sun, 16 Apr and addresses Jeremy
Hylton's suggestions that we also limit the size of the free tuple
list.  I chose 2000 as the maximum number of tuples of any particular
size to save.

There was also a problem with the previous version of this patch
causing a core dump if Python was built with Py_TRACE_REFS.  This is
fixed in the below version of the patch, which uses tupledealloc
instead of _Py_Dealloc.
"""