[New-bugs-announce] [issue27329] Document behavior when CDLL is called with None as an argument on POSIX systems

[Jeffrey Esquivel Sibaja]

New submission from Jeffrey Esquivel Sibaja:

On POSIX systems, when CDLL is called with None as an argument, it will call the system's dlopen() library function with NULL as it's filename parameter, causing the following behavior (as documented on dlopen's manpage):

"If filename is NULL, then the returned handle is for the main  program.  When given to dlsym(), this handle causes a search for a symbol in the main program, followed by all shared objects loaded at program startup, and then all shared objects loaded by dlopen() with the flag RTLD_GLOBAL."

But right now, this behavior is not explicitly documented anywhere which means users need to read ctypes' source code to find out if this would work.

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assignee: docs at python
components: Documentation, ctypes
messages: 268641
nosy: Jeffrey Esquivel Sibaja, docs at python
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: Document behavior when CDLL is called  with None as an argument on POSIX systems
type: enhancement
versions: Python 2.7, Python 3.5, Python 3.6

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue27329>
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