ctypes: Get full contents of character array

[Aaron "Castironpi" Brady]

On Sep 12, 6:38 pm, overdrig... at gmail.com wrote:
> Hello!
>
> I wanted to get the full contents of a character array stored in a
> struct, i.e.
> _fields_ = [...("array", c_char * 12)...]
> however, ctypes seems to try to return struct.array as a Python string
> rather than a character array, and stops as soon as it encounters a
> null within the character array.
>
> I ended up having to define a dummy struct
> class dummystruct(Structure):
>     _fields_ = []
>
> and declare array as:
> ("array", dummystruct)
>
> then use string_at(byref(struct.array), 12).
>
> Is this really the best way of doing it? Is there no better way to
> work around ctypes 'guess what you want' behaviour?
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Rodrigo

Rodrigo,

If you have the option to change your declaration to c_byte* 12, you
have more options.  This example prints the null character you wanted.

from ctypes import *
import struct
class S( Structure ):
    _fields_= [
        ( 'array', c_byte* 12 )
    ]
s= S()

#initialize
struct.pack_into( '7s', s.array, 0, 'abc\x00def' )

#prototype and call PyString_FromStringAndSize
prototype= PYFUNCTYPE( py_object, POINTER( c_byte ), c_size_t )
PyString_FromStringAndSize= prototype( ( "PyString_FromStringAndSize",
pythonapi ) )
x= PyString_FromStringAndSize( s.array, 12 )
print repr( x )

#prototype and call PyString_FromString for contrast
prototype= PYFUNCTYPE( py_object, POINTER( c_byte ) )
PyString_FromString= prototype( ( "PyString_FromString", pythonapi ) )
x= PyString_FromString( s.array )
print repr( x )

/Output:

'abc\x00def\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00'
'abc'