[Python-Dev] an idea for improving struct.unpack api

[Ilya Sandler]

> How about making offset a standard integer, and change the signature to
> return  tuple when it is used:
>  item, offset = unpack(format, rec, offset) # Partial unpacking

Well, it would work well when unpack results are assigned to individual
vars:

   x,y,offset=unpack( "ii", rec, offset)

but it gets more complicated if you have something like:
   coords=unpack("10i", rec)

How would you pass/return offsets here? As an extra element in coords?
   coords=unpack("10i", rec, offset)
   offset=coords.pop()

But that would be counterintuitive and somewhat inconvinient..

Ilya




On Sat, 8 Jan 2005, Nick Coghlan wrote:

> Ilya Sandler wrote:
> >     item=unpack( "IIII", rec, offset)
>
> How about making offset a standard integer, and change the signature to return a
> tuple when it is used:
>
>    item = unpack(format, rec) # Full unpacking
>    offset = 0
>    item, offset = unpack(format, rec, offset) # Partial unpacking
>
> The second item in the returned tuple being the offset of the first byte after
> the end of the unpacked item.
>
> Cheers,
> Nick.
>
> --
> Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at email.com   |   Brisbane, Australia
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
>              http://boredomandlaziness.skystorm.net
> _______________________________________________
> Python-Dev mailing list
> Python-Dev at python.org
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev
> Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/ilya%40bluefir.net
>