[Python-3000] Possible py3k problem resolved. (original) (raw)

Thomas Heller theller at ctypes.org
Wed Nov 19 20:27:24 CET 2008

Lambert, David W (S&T) schrieb:

Martin's "read the manual" answer is quite satisfying. Unfortunately, it doesn't fix core dump of Issue4309. I became excited thinking the problems could be related.

Issue4309 is basically this problem calling the printf function:

libc = CDLL(find_library("c")) printf = libc.printf printf("foo\n")

I appreciate your incite, Dave.

The behaviour is explained in the docs, but you have to read it very 'carefully' (and maybe it should be changed for python 3):

"None, integers, byte strings and unicode strings are the only native Python objects that can directly be used as parameters in these function calls. None is passed as a C NULL pointer, byte strings and unicode strings are passed as pointer to the memory block that contains their data (char * or wchar_t *). Python integers are passed as the platforms default C int type, their value is masked to fit into the C type."

When you write printf("foo\n") you are passing a /unicode string/ in Python 3, a /byte string/ in Python 2.x.

In Python 3 the printf C-function thus will receive a 'wchar_t *' pointer and so may crash or produce garbage since it must be called with a 'char *' pointer.

These are the possible solutions for py3:

  1. set the argtypes attribute for the printf function, and the first argument will automatically be converted to a valid 'char *' pointer, or an exception is raised if no conversion is possible: printf.argtypes = [c_char_p] printf("foo\n"); printf(b"foo\n"); ...

  2. Pass a bytes string instead of a (normal, unicode) string

  3. Wrap the argument into a c_char_p() instance

You have already mentioned the latter two solutions in the bug tracker. The first solution has the advantage that it is works for Python 2.x AND Python 3, and also has other advantages.

-- Thanks, Thomas

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