ctypes return a string from c function

Question

I'm a Python veteran, but haven't dabbled much in C. After half a day of not finding anything on the internet that works for me, I thought I would ask here and get the help I need.

What I want to do is write a simple C function that accepts a string and returns a different string. I plan to bind this function in several languages (Java, Obj-C, Python, etc.) so I think it has to be pure C?

Here's what I have so far. Notice I get a segfault when trying to retrieve the value in Python.

hello.c

#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>

const char* hello(char* name) {
    static char greeting[100] = "Hello, ";
    strcat(greeting, name);
    strcat(greeting, "!\n");
    printf("%s\n", greeting);
    return greeting;
}

main.py

import ctypes
hello = ctypes.cdll.LoadLibrary('./hello.so')
name = "Frank"
c_name = ctypes.c_char_p(name)
foo = hello.hello(c_name)
print c_name.value # this comes back fine
print ctypes.c_char_p(foo).value # segfault

I've read that the segfault is caused by C releasing the memory that was initially allocated for the returned string. Maybe I'm just barking up the wrong tree?

What's the proper way to accomplish what I want?

Answer 1

n hello.c you return a local array. You have to return a pointer to an array, which has to be dynamically declared using malloc.

char* hello(char* name)
{ 
    char hello[] = "Hello ";
    char excla[] = "!\n";
    char *greeting = malloc ( sizeof(char) * ( strlen(name) + strlen(hello) + strlen(excla) + 1 ) );
    if( greeting == NULL) exit(1);
    strcpy( greeting , hello);
    strcat(greeting, name);
    strcat(greeting, excla);
    return greeting;
}

Answer 2

Your problem is that greeting was allocated on the stack, but the stack is destroyed when the function returns. You could allocate the memory dynamically:

#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>

const char* hello(char* name) {
    char* greeting = malloc(100);
    snprintf("Hello, %s!\n", 100, name)
    printf("%s\n", greeting);
    return greeting;
}

But that's only part of the battle because now you have a memory leak. You could plug that with another ctypes call to free().

...or a much better approach is to read up on the official C binding to python (python 2.x at http://docs.python.org/2/c-api/ and python 3.x at http://docs.python.org/3/c-api/). Have your C function create a python string object and hand that back. It will be garbage collected by python automatically. Since you are writing the C side, you don't have to play the ctypes game.

...edit..

I didn't compile and test, but I think this .py would work:

import ctypes

# define the interface
hello = ctypes.cdll.LoadLibrary('./hello.so')
# find lib on linux or windows
libc = ctypes.CDLL(ctypes.util.find_library('c'))
# declare the functions we use
hello.hello.argtypes = (ctypes.c_char_p,)
hello.hello.restype = ctypes.c_char_p
libc.free.argtypes = (ctypes.c_void_p,)

# wrap hello to make sure the free is done
def hello(name):
    _result = hello.hello(name)
    result = _result.value
    libc.free(_result)
    return result

# do the deed
print hello("Frank")

Answer 3

Here's what happens. And why it's breaking. When hello() is called, the C stack pointer is moved up, making room for any memory needed by your function. Along with some function call overhead, all of your function locals are managed there. So that static char greeting[100], means that 100 bytes of the increased stack are for that string. You than use some functions that manipulate that memory. At the you place a pointer on the stack to the greeting memory. And then you return from the call, at which point, the stack pointer is retracted back to it's original before call position. So those 100 bytes that were on the stack for the duration of your call, are essentially up for grabs again as the stack is further manipulated. Including the address field which pointed to that value and that you returned. At that point, who knows what happens to it, but it's likely set to zero or some other value. And when you try to access it as if it were still viable memory, you get a segfault.

To get around, you need to manage that memory differently somehow. You can have your function allocate the memory on the heap, but you'll need to make sure it gets free()'ed at a later date, by your binding. OR, you can write your function so that the binding language passes it a glump of memory to be used.

Answer 4

I ran into this same problem today and found you must override the default return type (int) by setting restype on the method. See Return types in the ctype doc here.

import ctypes
hello = ctypes.cdll.LoadLibrary('./hello.so')
name = "Frank"
c_name = ctypes.c_char_p(name)
hello.hello.restype = ctypes.c_char_p # override the default return type (int)
foo = hello.hello(c_name)
print c_name.value
print ctypes.c_char_p(foo).value