[Python-Dev] mmap

[David Beazley]

Fredrik Lundh writes:
> 
> and in Python, any decent extension writer should write
> code that works with arbitrary file objects, right?   "if it
> cannot deal with StringIO objects, it's broken"...

I disagree.  Given that a lot of people use Python as a glue language
for interfacing with legacy codes, it is unacceptable for extensions
to be forced to use some sort of funky non-standard I/O abstraction.
Unless you are volunteering to rewrite all of these codes to use the
new I/O model, you are always going to need access (in one way or
another) to plain old 'FILE *' and integer file descriptors.  Of
course, one can always just provide a function like

    FILE *PyFile_AsFile(PyObject *o)

That takes an I/O object and returns a 'FILE *' where supported.  (Of
course, if it's not supported, then it doesn't matter if this function
is missing since any extension that needs a 'FILE *' wouldn't work
anyways).

Cheers,

Dave