[Tutor] [tutor] how to cast to stucture

[Alan Gauld]

> i have a complex data in binary file and i want to read its
> fields... the C way is to read file in buffer and then cast
> it to proper structure. Is there a way to do the same in
> Python or i have to read the data byte by byte ?

You can use the struct module to unpack an arbitrary 
sequence of bytes. You can find a very basic intro to 
struct in the File Handliung topic of my tutorial.

But its not as simple as in C where you can more 
or less map a memory area onto a structuure, you'll 
need to extract each field and inert it into the 
equivalent Python data structure - but if that is a 
class you can write a method (load say?) to do the 
heavy work and just call load(file) or whatever when 
needed.

Alan G.