How to convert unicode string to unsigned char *

[Jean-Paul Calderone]

On Mon, 5 May 2008 16:05:08 +0200, Simon Posnjak <sposnjak at gmail.com> wrote:
>On Mon, May 5, 2008 at 3:48 PM, Jean-Paul Calderone <exarkun at divmod.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, 5 May 2008 15:41:08 +0200, Simon Posnjak <sposnjak at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > Hi!
>> >
>> > I have a C module for which I created a wrapper with swig. The function
>> def is:
>> >
>> > C:
>> >
>> > int some_thing(unsigned char * the_str);
>> >
>> > eg:
>> >
>> > Python:
>> >
>> > some_module.some_thing (the_str)
>> >
>> > Now I would like to feed it with a UTF-8 formatted string:
>> >
>> > test = u'Make \u0633\u0644\u0627\u0645, not war.'
>> >
>>
>>  `test´ is not a UTF-8 encoded string.  It's a unicode string.
>>
>>  To get a UTF-8 encoded string from a unicode string, use the `encode´
>>  method:
>>
>>    some_module.some_thing(test.encode('utf-8'))
>
>Yes you are correct. It is unicode string. But still if I use encode I
>get the same error:
>
>TypeError with message: in method 'some_thing', argument 1 of type
>'unsigned char *'
>
>So I am looking for a way to "cast" unicode string to unsigned char *.
>

You need to provide some more information about `some_module.some_thing´.
How is it implemented?  What Python type does it expect?  If it doesn't
take a unicode string and it doesn't take a byte string, I don't know
what kind of string it does take.

Jean-Paul