Close rdpcap function - Scapy

Question

I have a script that loops through a lot of pcap files. For each pcap file I need to read it and then write some information to a txt file. I'm using the rdcap function from Scapy. Is there anyway to close the pcap file once I'm done reading it? My script has a memory leak and I'm worried this may be the culprit (via leaving many pcap files essentially open)

Answer 1

Inspecting Scapy's source code reveals that the rdpcap function neglects to close the pcap file:

@conf.commands.register
def rdpcap(filename, count=-1):
    """Read a pcap file and return a packet list
count: read only <count> packets"""
    return PcapReader(filename).read_all(count=count)

I suggest you implement your own version of this function as follows:

def rdpcap_and_close(filename, count=-1):
    """Read a pcap file, return a packet list and close the file
count: read only <count> packets"""
    pcap_reader = PcapReader(filename)
    packets = pcap_reader.read_all(count=count)
    pcap_reader.close()
    return packets

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I've created an issue for this problem here.

EDIT: The issue has been resolved in this changeset.