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

[Michael Hudson]

Bob Ippolito <bob at redivi.com> writes:

> 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

Unsurprisingly, that's fairly similar to mine :)

Cheers,
mwh

-- 
  If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them
  down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.
                                                        -- Jack Handey