[Tutor] Using C in python

[Alan Gauld]

"amit sethi" <amit.pureenergy at gmail.com> wrote

> what are the ways in which i can use C in python programs . 

You can't use C directly what you can do is access libraries written in C.
In fact quite a few of the standard libraries are written that way.

So it depends what you want to do.

If you have C source code that you want to execute from Python 
you can either::
a) Build a library and create a Python wrapper so it looks like a module
b) Build an executable file and call that using subprocess/popen etc
c) If its one of the common C libraries or a Windows DLL you can 
   probably use an existing framework to call it. For example ctypes 
   will access a lot of stuff.

If you want to execute Python code from a C program, you can 
do that too, but it doesn't sound like thats what you need?

> SWIG bindings are there any other . Also Could anyone explain how Swig
> bindings work?

SWIG bindings just expose C code in the right format for Python 
to see the code as a Python module. Its slightly easier than doing 
it by hand in C because it automates what is a pretty brain 
dead repetitive process. ( I've only used SWIG with Tcl but I 
assume its a similar process for Python.)

HTH,

-- 
Alan G
Author of the Learn to Program web site
http://www.alan-g.me.uk/