[Python-Dev] PEP: Adding data-type objects to Python

[Travis Oliphant]

Greg Ewing wrote:
> Travis Oliphant wrote:
> 
> 
>>Part of the problem is that ctypes uses a lot of different Python types 
>>(that's what I mean by "multi-object" to accomplish it's goal).  What 
>>I'm looking for is a single Python type that can be passed around and 
>>explains binary data.
> 
> 
> It's not clear that multi-object is a bad thing in and
> of itself. It makes sense conceptually -- if you have
> a datatype object representing a struct, and you ask
> for a description of one of its fields, which could
> be another struct or array, you would expect to get
> another datatype object describing that.
> 
> Can you elaborate on what would be wrong with this?
> 
> Also, can you clarify whether your objection is to
> multi-object or multi-type. They're not the same thing --
> you could have a data structure built out of multiple
> objects that are all of the same Python type, with
> attributes distinguishing between struct, array, etc.
> That would be single-type but multi-object.

I've tried to clarify this in another post.  Basically, what I don't 
like about the ctypes approach is that it is multi-type (every new 
data-format is a Python type).

In order to talk about all these Python types together, then they must 
all share some attribute (or else be derived from a meta-type in C with 
a specific function-pointer entry).

I think it is simpler to think of a single Python type whose instances 
convey information about data-format.

-Travis