[Python-Dev] Extension of struct to handle non byte aligned values?

Mon Aug 1 12:26:15 CEST 2005

"George V. Neville-Neil" <gnn at neville-neil.com> writes:
> Hi,
>> I'm attempting to write a Packet class, and a few other classes for
> use in writing protocol conformance tests. For the most part this is
> going well except that I'd like to be able to pack and unpack byte
> strings with values that are not 8 bit based quantities.

[...]
> Thoughts?

Well, the main thing that comes to mind is that I wouldn't regard the
struct interface as being something totally wonderful and perfect.
I am aware of a few attempts to make up a better interface, such as
ctypes and Bob's rather similar looking ptypes from macholib:
http://svn.red-bean.com/bob/py2app/trunk/src/macholib/ptypes.py
and various silly unreleased things I've done. They all work on the
basic idea of a class schema that describes the binary structure, eg:
class Sound(Message):
 code = 0x06
 layout = [('mask', BYTE()),
 ('vol', CDI(1, SDI(BYTE(), 1/255.0), 1.0)),
 ('attenuation', CDI(2, SDI(BYTE(), 1/64.0), 1.0)),
 ('entitychan', SHORT()),
 ('soundnum', BYTE()),
 ('origin', COORD()*3)]
You may want to do something similar (presumably the struct module or
some other c stuff would be under the hood somewhere).
I don't really see a need to change CPython here, unless some general
binary parsing scheme becomes best-of-breed and a candidate for stdlib
inclusion.
Cheers,
mwh
PS: This is probably more comp.lang.python material.
-- 
 The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore,
 be regarded as a criminal offence.
 -- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5