[C++-sig] Re: C arrays solution

[Niall Douglas]

On 13 Oct 2003 at 19:12, David Abrahams wrote:

> > boost::python::class_<FXObjectList, 
> > boost::noncopyable>("FXObjectList")
> >         .def("getData", MakeCArray(&FXObjectList::getData, 
> > &FXObjectList::getDataLen))
> >
> > And bam!, in one fell swoop the problem is solved.
> 
> I'm not sure I know exactly what problem you're solving (what do you
> expect to be able to do with the result of this getData call?)  but
> your use of a global pointer to hold the result is terribly unsafe...
> not to mention the fact that your code leaks CArray objects like a
> sieve.

Again, all artifacts of proof of concept code. The hard part for me 
was the compile-time programming.

I should add that in all the code I've written in the last three 
years, I've had a total of I think eight memory leaks ever (according 
to valgrind and MSVC's debug CRT memory leak facilities). And that's 
over 50,000 lines now, probably more.

> If you're satisfied with that, I guess I'm satisfied.  Otherwise,
> perhaps you'd like to post a little more detail about how you want to
> be able to *use* this code from Python?  I think people here,
> especially Raoul, should be able to make some suggestions which would
> solve the problem in a more principled way.

>>> from TestCArrays import *
>>> a=MyList()
>>> b=a.getData()
>>> print len(b)
4
>>> print b[0:4]
['Niall', 'is', 'a', 'teapot']
>>> b[1]="is not"
>>> print b[0:4]
['Niall', 'is not', 'a', 'teapot']

The key here is that MyList knows nothing of python and offers no 
more than a C array of pointers, something which up until now was 
hard to wrap without lots of munge code.

Cheers,
Niall




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