reading struct in python from created struct in c

Question

I am very new at using Python and very rusty with C, so I apologize in advance for how dumb and/or lost I sound.

I have function in C that creates a .dat file contai

Answer 1

I had same problem recently, so I had made module for the task, stored here: http://pastebin.com/XJyZMyHX

example code:

MY_STRUCT="""typedef struct __attribute__ ((__packed__)){
    uint8_t u8;
    uint16_t u16;
    uint32_t u32;
    uint64_t u64;
    int8_t i8;
    int16_t i16;
    int32_t i32;
    int64_t i64;
    long long int lli;
    float flt;
    double dbl;
    char string[12];
    uint64_t array[5];
} debugInfo;"""

PACKED_STRUCT='\x01\x00\x01\x00\x00\x01\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x01\x00\x00\x00\xff\x00\xff\x00\x00\xff\xff\x00\x00\x00\x00\xff\xff\xff\xff*\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00ff\x06@\x14\xaeG\xe1z\x14\x08@testString\x00\x00\x01\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x02\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x03\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x04\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x05\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00'

if __name__ == '__main__':
    print "String:"
    print depack_bytearray_to_str(PACKED_STRUCT,MY_STRUCT,"<" )
    print "Bytes in Stuct:"+str(structSize(MY_STRUCT))
    nt=depack_bytearray_to_namedtuple(PACKED_STRUCT,MY_STRUCT,"<" )
    print "Named tuple nt:"
    print nt
    print "nt.string="+nt.string

The result should be:

String:
u8:1
u16:256
u32:65536
u64:4294967296
i8:-1
i16:-256
i32:-65536
i64:-4294967296
lli:42
flt:2.09999990463
dbl:3.01
string:u'testString\x00\x00'
array:(1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

Bytes in Stuct:102
Named tuple nt:
CStruct(u8=1, u16=256, u32=65536, u64=4294967296L, i8=-1, i16=-256, i32=-65536, i64=-4294967296L, lli=42, flt=2.0999999046325684, dbl=3.01, string="u'testString\\x00\\x00'", array=(1, 2, 3, 4, 5))
nt.string=u'testString\x00\x00'

Answer 2

You could use ctypes.Structure or struct.Struct to specify format of the file. To read structures from the file produced by C code in @perreal's answer:

"""
struct { double v; int t; char c;};
"""
from ctypes import *

class YourStruct(Structure):
    _fields_ = [('v', c_double),
                ('t', c_int),
                ('c', c_char)]

with open('c_structs.bin', 'rb') as file:
    result = []
    x = YourStruct()
    while file.readinto(x) == sizeof(x):
        result.append((x.v, x.t, x.c))

print(result)
# -> [(12.100000381469727, 17, 's'), (12.100000381469727, 17, 's'), ...]

See io.BufferedIOBase.readinto(). It is supported in Python 3 but it is undocumented in Python 2.7 for a default file object.

struct.Struct requires to specify padding bytes (x) explicitly:

"""
struct { double v; int t; char c;};
"""
from struct import Struct

x = Struct('dicxxx')
with open('c_structs.bin', 'rb') as file:
    result = []
    while True:
        buf = file.read(x.size)
        if len(buf) != x.size:
            break
        result.append(x.unpack_from(buf))

print(result)

It produces the same output.

To avoid unnecessary copying Array.from_buffer(mmap_file) could be used to get an array of structs from a file:

import mmap # Unix, Windows
from contextlib import closing

with open('c_structs.bin', 'rb') as file:
    with closing(mmap.mmap(file.fileno(), 0, access=mmap.ACCESS_COPY)) as mm: 
        result = (YourStruct * 3).from_buffer(mm) # without copying
        print("\n".join(map("{0.v} {0.t} {0.c}".format, result)))

Answer 3

A number in the format specifier means a repeat count, but it has to go before the letter, like '<8d'. However you said you just want to read one element of the struct. I guess you just want '<d'. I guess you are trying to specify the number of bytes to read as 8, but you don't need to do that. d assumes that.

I also noticed you are using readline. That seems wrong for reading binary data. It will read until the next carriage return / line feed, which will occur randomly in binary data. What you want to do is use read(size), like this:

part_struct = part.read(8)
r = struct.unpack('<d', part_struct)

Actually, you should be careful, as read can return less data than you request. You need to repeat it if it does.

part_struct = b''
while len(part_struct) < 8:
    data = part.read(8 - len(part_struct))
    if not data: raise IOException("unexpected end of file")
    part_struct += data
r = struct.unpack('<d', part_struct)

Answer 4

Some C code:

#include <stdio.h>
typedef struct { double v; int t; char c;} save_type;
int main() {
    save_type s = { 12.1f, 17, 's'};
    FILE *f = fopen("output", "w");
    fwrite(&s, sizeof(save_type), 1, f);
    fwrite(&s, sizeof(save_type), 1, f);
    fwrite(&s, sizeof(save_type), 1, f);
    fclose(f);
    return 0;
}

Some Python code:

import struct
with open('output', 'rb') as f:
    chunk = f.read(16)
    while chunk != "":
        print len(chunk)
        print struct.unpack('dicccc', chunk)
        chunk = f.read(16)

Output:

(12.100000381469727, 17, 's', '\x00', '\x00', '\x00')
(12.100000381469727, 17, 's', '\x00', '\x00', '\x00')
(12.100000381469727, 17, 's', '\x00', '\x00', '\x00')

but there is also the padding issue. The padded size of save_type is 16, so we read 3 more characters and ignore them.