[Tutor] ctypes question

[Albert-Jan Roskam]

Hi,
 
I have a program that reads and writes files using ctypes. When I want it to read AND write (e.g. read a file, select some stuff and write that), the library returns a 'read-open' error. I think that the pointer to the file handle for read and write point to the same address. To test that hypothesis, I wrote the simplified code below. Problem is, that I can't make it work, let alone come up with a solution. ;-( How do I tell ctypes to use a particular chunck of memory, so read and write buffers do not mutually interfere? Maybe the 'offset' parameter of ctypes.byref?
 
import ctypes
import platform
import os
import tempfile

# load libraries
pf = platform.platform().lower()
if pf.startswith("win"):
    libc = ctypes.cdll.msvcrt
    fopen = libc._fdopen
elif pf.startswith("lin"):
    libc = ctypes.CDLL("libc.so.6")
    fopen = libc.fdopen
elif pf.startswith("darwin"):
    libc = ctypes.CDLL("libc.dylib")
    fopen = libc.fdopen
else:
    raise NotImplementedError

# create test data
path = tempfile.gettempdir()
os.chdir(path)
fn = "test.txt"
lines = 100 * (100 * "*" + os.linesep)
with open(fn, "wb") as f:
    f.write(lines)

 
# read test data (code does NOT work)
fh = fopen(ctypes.c_char_p(fn), "rb")
fhPtr = ctypes.byref(ctypes.c_int(fh))
buff = ctypes.create_string_buffer(lines)
ret = libc.fread(buff, ctypes.c_int(1), ctypes.c_int(len(lines)), fhPtr)
print buff.value

 
# write test data (code does NOT work)
fn = "somefile.txt"
fh_out = fopen(ctypes.c_char_p(fn), "wb")
fh_outPtr = ctypes.byref(ctypes.c_int(fh_out))
buff = ctypes.create_string_buffer(lines)
ret = libc.fwrite(buff, ctypes.c_int(1), ctypes.c_int(len(lines)), fh_outPtr)

 Thanks in advance!

Regards,
Albert-Jan


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