Question about 'wave' module

[david.kettle at sympatico.ca]

Hello Python World!

I've been playing with the 'wave' and 'audioop' modules in the library,
and I have a question. When I tried to read a "wav" file with samples 
in 32-bit float, I got the following error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "Play.py", line 111, in ?
    playWAV(sys.argv[1])
  File "Play.py", line 69, in playWAV
    f = wave.open(fname,'rb')
  File "D:\Python23\lib\wave.py", line 483, in open
    return Wave_read(f)
  File "D:\Python23\lib\wave.py", line 162, in __init__
    self.initfp(f)
  File "D:\Python23\lib\wave.py", line 143, in initfp
    self._read_fmt_chunk(chunk)
  File "D:\Python23\lib\wave.py", line 264, in _read_fmt_chunk
    raise Error, 'unknown format: ' + `wFormatTag`
wave.Error: unknown format: 3

Although the documentation doesn't explicitly say so, it appears
that only 16-bit format is supported. I looked at the source code
('wave.py'), and I think my hunch is correct. On lines 245 (in 
method 'readframes') and 412 (in method 'writeframesraw'), a call
is made to the array method 'byteswap' if the machine is "big-
endian", without testing to see if the samples are 16-bit or
32-bit. I don't understand how this could work without knowing
how many bytes to "swap", (ie, 2 or 4).

Has anyone on this list used these modules? Am I missing something?
BTW, I'm on version 2.3.2 for Windows. The 32-bit sound file was
created with a program called "Audacity". I believe the format of
the file is a valid wave file format, I'm able to play it with 
Windows Media Player.

Thanks for your help.


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