[Python-Dev] struct module docs vs reality (original) (raw)
Gregory P. Smith greg at krypto.org
Wed Jan 23 21:37:37 CET 2008
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The documentation for the struct module says:
http://docs.python.org/dev/library/struct.html#module-struct
"short is 2 bytes; int and long are 4 bytes; long long (__int64 on Windows) is 8 bytes"
and lists 'l' and 'L' as the pack code for a C long.
As its implemented today, the documentation is incorrect. On an LP64 host (pretty much any 64-bit linux, bsd or unixish thing) a long is 8 bytes.
I assume this means there is existing code out there that expects the current not-as-documented behavior. There is also code out there that expects the documented behavior but behaves wrong when a 64bit Python is used.
I assume I should just fix the documentation and anything in Lib that uses the struct module incorrectly (zipfile for example) rather than change the behavior?
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