How to pack and unpack using ctypes (Structure <-> str)

Question

This might be a silly question but I couldn\'t find a good answer in the docs or anywhere.

If I use struct to define a binary structure, the struct

Answer 1

The PythonInfo wiki has a solution for this.

FAQ: How do I copy bytes to Python from a ctypes.Structure?

def send(self):
    return buffer(self)[:]

FAQ: How do I copy bytes to a ctypes.Structure from Python?

def receiveSome(self, bytes):
    fit = min(len(bytes), ctypes.sizeof(self))
    ctypes.memmove(ctypes.addressof(self), bytes, fit)

Their send is the (more-or-less) equivalent of pack, and receiveSome is sort of a pack_into. If you have a "safe" situation where you're unpacking into a struct of the same type as the original, you can one-line it like memmove(addressof(y), buffer(x)[:], sizeof(y)) to copy x into y. Of course, you'll probably have a variable as the second argument, rather than a literal packing of x.