[Python-Dev] an idea for improving struct.unpack api

[Bob Ippolito]

On Jan 6, 2005, at 8:17, Michael Hudson wrote:

> Ilya Sandler <ilya at bluefir.net> writes:
>
>> A problem:
>>
>> The current struct.unpack api works well for unpacking C-structures 
>> where
>> everything is usually unpacked at once, but it
>> becomes  inconvenient when unpacking binary files where things
>> often have to be unpacked field by field. Then one has to keep track
>> of offsets, slice the strings,call struct.calcsize(), etc...
>
> IMO (and E), struct.unpack is the primitive atop which something more
> sensible is built.  I've certainly tried to build that more sensible
> thing at least once, but haven't ever got the point of believing what
> I had would be applicable to the general case... maybe it's time to
> write such a thing for the standard library.

This is my ctypes-like attempt at a high-level interface for struct.  
It works well for me in macholib:  
http://svn.red-bean.com/bob/py2app/trunk/src/macholib/ptypes.py

-bob