Add a growth() function that doesn't print

I've been using objgraph in my Python roguelike. Peak object count is interesting info, but show_growth() prints, which doesn't work when you're using curses to control the console. I added a growth() function which returns the data used in the table.

Not strictly related, but there's a second commit in here that lets you return the dot file as a string without writing it to disk or opening it, which lets me have more control over the results (like postprocessing, or piping the output to something).

I didn't have time to make further changes, but while working on the code I came up with a few suggestions:

I wouldn't recommend printing inside of a library, or at least, you should provide a toggle to override it. There are a lot of circumstances where print either won't work or will interfere with what the program's supposed to do. A better approach is for the functions to accept a printer argument (falling back to print), and then call printer() in functions instead of print() directly.
There are a bunch of places where the library isn't as flexible as it could be. For example, show_growth() could have an option for current as well as peak object count/delta. Or in show_graph(), functions like obj_label could be arguments that can be overridden. (An object-oriented equivalent that allows subclassing the render functions would be even better.)
Storing the data from show_growth() in function defaults isn't a great idea. How they work is poorly understood, and I suspect it'll lead to someone trying to use it as a 'reset', which doesn't work:

objgraph.show_growth():
wrapper_descriptor             1043     +1043
function                       1004     +1004
builtin_function_or_method      660      +660
method_descriptor               539      +539
dict                            438      +438
weakref                         324      +324
tuple                           197      +197
member_descriptor               188      +188
list                            168      +168
getset_descriptor               155      +155

objgraph.show_growth():

Create dictionaries:

objgraph.show_growth(peak_stats={}):
wrapper_descriptor             1043     +1043
function                       1004     +1004
builtin_function_or_method      660      +660
method_descriptor               539      +539
dict                            439      +439
weakref                         324      +324
tuple                           197      +197
member_descriptor               188      +188
list                            168      +168
getset_descriptor               155      +155

objgraph.show_growth(peak_stats={}):
wrapper_descriptor             1043     +1043
function                       1004     +1004
builtin_function_or_method      660      +660
method_descriptor               539      +539
dict                            439      +439
weakref                         324      +324
tuple                           197      +197
member_descriptor               188      +188
list                            168      +168
getset_descriptor               155      +155

objgraph.show_growth():
dict      439        +1

A better option would be to store stats at the module level and add reset=False to relevant functions.

Suggestions aside - thanks for all the great work on this! It's a really wonderful tool :) I wish I'd tried it sooner...

mgedmin / objgraph

Add a growth() function that doesn't print #8