[Python-Dev] Buffer interface in abstract.c?

[Fredrik Lundh]

> > Simply because multiple segments hasn't been seen. All objects
> > supporting the buffer interface have a single segment. IMO, it is best
> 
> FYI, if/when NumPy objects support the buffer API, they will require
> multiple-segments.  

same goes for PIL.  in the worst case, there's
one segment per line.

...

on the other hand, I think something is missing from
the buffer design; I definitely don't like that people
can write and marshal objects that happen to
implement the buffer interface, only to find that
Python didn't do what they expected...

>>> import unicode
>>> import marshal
>>> u = unicode.unicode
>>> s = u("foo")
>>> data = marshal.dumps(s)
>>> marshal.loads(data)
'f\000o\000o\000'
>>> type(marshal.loads(data))
<type 'string'>

as for PIL, I would also prefer if the exported buffer
corresponded to what you get from im.tostring().  iirc,
that cannot be done -- I cannot export via a temporary
memory buffer, since there's no way to know when to
get rid of it...

</F>