struct pointing to another struct?

[Peter Otten]

inhahe wrote:

> On Aug 13, 4:07 pm, Peter Otten <__pete... at web.de> wrote:
>> inhahe wrote:
>> > say i have this definition:
>>
>> > 1 typedef struct SDL_Surface {
>> > 2     Uint32 flags;                           /* Read-only */
>> > 3     SDL_PixelFormat *format;                /* Read-only */
>> > 4     int w, h;                               /* Read-only */
>> > 5     Uint16 pitch;                           /* Read-only */
>> > 6     void *pixels;                           /* Read-write */
>> > 7     SDL_Rect clip_rect;                     /* Read-only */
>> > 8     int refcount;                           /* Read-mostly */
>> > 9
>> > 10   /* This structure also contains private fields not shown here
>> > */
>> > 11 } SDL_Surface;
>>
>> > notice two pointers, format and pixels.
>> > say format has this definition.
>>
>> > 1 typedef struct {
>> > 2   SDL_Palette *palette;
>> > 3   Uint8  BitsPerPixel;
>> > 4   Uint8  BytesPerPixel;
>> > 5   Uint8  Rloss, Gloss, Bloss, Aloss;
>> > 6   Uint8  Rshift, Gshift, Bshift, Ashift;
>> > 7   Uint32 Rmask, Gmask, Bmask, Amask;
>> > 8   Uint32 colorkey;
>> > 9   Uint8  alpha;
>> > 10 } SDL_PixelFormat;
>>
>> > so say i want to create a mock sdl handle and pass it to some library
>> > function that requires an sdl handle. (would it even work? would i
>> > need to use an SDL_SWSURFACE?)
>>
>> > so i make the pixelformat data using struct.pack, and make the surface
>> > data using struct.pack, but how do i link the surface data to the
>> > pixelformat data?  if i just use id() it'll give me the memory address
>> > of the "box" for the string and not the string data itself.  thanks.
>>
>> I think you are looking at the wrong module; you need ctypes, not struct.
>>
>> http://docs.python.org/library/ctypes.html
>>
>> Peter
> 
> can you (or anybody) tell me how to link one c struct to another using
> ctypes? Thx

I know it sounds old-fashioned, but the documentation is worth reading. It 
contains examples for structs, pointers and arrays, e. g. 

"""
>>> from ctypes import *
>>> class cell(Structure):
...     pass
...
>>> cell._fields_ = [("name", c_char_p),
...                  ("next", POINTER(cell))]
>>>
"""

Peter