Importing DLLs

[Corbitt, Kyle]

I'm running Linux with Python 2.3.  I have a C shared object file (*.so) and I need to be able to call its functions from within Python.  I have found a couple of Python modules that allow me to do this (dl, ctypes) but unfortunately I am only able to get them to return integers, even for function calls that I KNOW the library is supposed to return other types for.  I need the library to be able to return doubles, 2D arrays and hopefully strings as well.  I do have access to the C source code that the library was compiled from and can change it if necessary but I know even less about C than I do about Python so it'd be great if I could avoid that.
 
Keep in mind that I am a python newbie (I only have a few weeks' experience) so the more detailed you can make your response, the better.  Example code would be great.  I'm sure there's a way to do this but I've been  bashing my head against this problem for a couple days now and haven't made much progress.
 
Thanks,
Kyle
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/20070815/1307985d/attachment.html>