I'm implementing the buffer API and some of memoryview for Jython. I have read with interest, and mostly understood, the discussion in Issue #10181 that led to the v3.3 re-implementation of memoryview and much-improved documentation of the buffer API. Although Jython is targeting v2.7 at the moment, and 1-D bytes (there's no Jython NumPy), I'd like to lay a solid foundation that benefits from the recent CPython work. I hope that some of the complexity in memoryview stems from legacy considerations I don't have to deal with in Jython. I am puzzled that PEP 3118 makes some specifications that seem unnecessary and complicate the implementation. Would those who know the API inside out answer a few questions? My understanding is this: When a consumer requests a buffer from the exporter it specifies using flags how it intends to navigate it. If the buffer actually needs more apparatus than the consumer proposes, this raises an exception. If the buffer needs less apparatus than the consumer proposes, the exporter has to supply what was asked for. For example, if the consumer sets PyBUF_STRIDES, and the buffer can only be navigated by using suboffsets (PIL-style) this raises an exception. Alternatively, if the consumer sets PyBUF_STRIDES, and the buffer is just a simple byte array, the exporter has to supply shape and strides arrays (with trivial values), since the consumer is going to use those arrays. Is there any harm is supplying shape and strides when they were not requested? The PEP says: "PyBUF_ND ... If this is not given then shape will be NULL". It doesn't stipulate that strides will be null if PyBUF_STRIDES is not given, but the library documentation says so. suboffsets is different since even when requested, it will be null if not needed. Similar, but simpler, the PEP says "PyBUF_FORMAT ... If format is not explicitly requested then the format must be returned as NULL (which means "B", or unsigned bytes)". What would be the harm in returning "B"? One place where this really matters is in the implementation of memoryview. PyMemoryView requests a buffer with the flags PyBUF_FULL_RO, so even a simple byte buffer export will come with shape, strides and format. A consumer (of the memoryview's buffer API) might specify PyBUF_SIMPLE: according to the PEP I can't simply give it the original buffer since required fields (that the consumer will presumably not access) are not NULL. In practice, I'd like to: what could possibly go wrong? Jeff Allen