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[on the user-supplies-buffer interface] I think this would be much less error-prone than having fixed-length buffers all over the place.

PyArg_ParseTuple() should probably raise an error in case the data doesn't fit into the buffer.

Ah, that's right, that solves most of that problem.

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[on the malloced interface] Good point. You'll still need the buffer_len output parameter though -- otherwise you wouldn't be able tell the size of the allocated buffer (the returned data may not be terminated).

Are you sure? I would expect the "eS" format to be used to obtain 8-bit data in some local encoding, and I would expect that all 8-bit encodings of unicode data would still allow for null-termination. Or are there 8-bit encodings out there where a zero byte is normal occurrence and where it can't be used as terminator? -- Jack Jansen | ++++ stop the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal ++++ Jack.Jansen@oratrix.com | ++++ if you agree copy these lines to your sig ++++ www.oratrix.nl/~jack | see http://www.xs4all.nl/~tank/spg-l/sigaction.htm