[Python-Dev] struct module docs vs reality (original) (raw)

Thomas Heller theller at ctypes.org
Wed Jan 23 22:00:07 CET 2008


Gregory P. Smith schrieb:

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?

+1 (actually +100) from me.

Thomas



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