[New-bugs-announce] [issue34592] cdll.LoadLibrary allows None as an argument

[Sergei Lebedev]

New submission from Sergei Lebedev <superbobry at gmail.com>:

LoadLibrary in Python 2.7 through 3.7 accepts None as an argument. I wonder if this has been allowed for a reason? If not, it should probably be changed to raise a TypeError instead.

>>> ctypes.cdll.LoadLibrary(None)
<CDLL 'None', handle fffffffffffffffe at 10eedbe90>

Interestingly, on Python 2.7 LoadLibrary explicitly mentions None as allowed in the error message:

>>> ctypes.cdll.LoadLibrary(42)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "[...]/ctypes/__init__.py", line 444, in LoadLibrary
    return self._dlltype(name)
  File "[...]/ctypes/__init__.py", line 366, in __init__
    self._handle = _dlopen(self._name, mode)
TypeError: dlopen() argument 1 must be string or None, not int

A side-effect of None being allowed is that chaining find_library and LoadLibrary is error-prone:

>>> ctypes.cdll.LoadLibrary(find_library("foobar"))
<CDLL 'None', handle fffffffffffffffe at 10ef35fd0>

----------
messages: 324654
nosy: superbobry
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: cdll.LoadLibrary allows None as an argument
versions: Python 2.7, Python 3.4, Python 3.5, Python 3.6, Python 3.7

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<https://bugs.python.org/issue34592>
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