ctypes

Utility functions:

ctypes.addressof(obj)
Returns the address of the memory buffer as integer. obj must be an instance of a ctypes type.

ctypes.alignment(obj_or_type)
Returns the alignment requirements of a ctypes type. obj_or_type must be a ctypes type or instance.

ctypes.byref(obj[, offset])
Returns a light-weight pointer to obj, which must be an instance of a ctypes type. offset defaults to zero, and must be an integer that will be added to the internal pointer value.

byref(obj, offset) corresponds to this C code:

(((char *)&obj) + offset)
The returned object can only be used as a foreign function call parameter. It behaves similar to pointer(obj), but the construction is a lot faster.

New in version 2.6: The offset optional argument was added.

ctypes.cast(obj, type)
This function is similar to the cast operator in C. It returns a new instance of type which points to the same memory block as obj. type must be a pointer type, and obj must be an object that can be interpreted as a pointer.

1、addressof与byref关系

>>>str1=c_char_p("hello world")
>>>p1=addressof(str1)
>>>p2=byref(str1)
>>>print hex(p1)
0x107a26a30
>>>print p2
<cparam 'P' (0x107a26a30)>
#其内存地址为0x107a26a30

2、c_char_p、c_int、pointer内存中形式

>>>str1=c_char_p("hello world")
>>>i1=c_int(3333）
>>>p1=pointer(i1)

str1的内存为一个指针，指向一个字符串；
i1的内存为一个整数；
p1的内存为一个数据结构;

在windbg查看以上对象的内存内容发现c_int的内存形式与c语言的整数形式一样。c_char_p的内存内容为一个指针，指针指向一个字符串，而c语言中一个字符串变量的内存内容直接是字符串。pointer对象有其自己结构，其第三个DWORD为其contents指针，contents内容为pointer指向对象的指针。假如指向对象为c_int，则contents中内容为c_int对象的地址。

>>>str1=c_char_("hello world")
>>>p1=cast(str1,POINTER(c_int))
>>>print p1.contents.value
0x6c6c6568 #为hell的十六进制形式

假如我们要移位输出str1的话，那怎么办呢？比如获得“world”这个字符串。

>>>i1=cast(byref(str1),POINTER(c_int))#str1内容是字符串的指针，我们要对此指针进行加操作，先得获取此指针，就是将其转换成整数，cast只接受指针，所以先获取他们的指针，再转。
>>>offset1=i1.contents.value+6 #加偏移6,便是字符串world的地址，接下来需要将此地址转成c_char_p
>>>i2=c_int(offset1) #首先得得到它的对象
>>>str2=cast(byref(i2),POINTER(c_char_p)) #将i2转成c_char_p，由于cast只接受指针，所以先取其指针，再转。
>>>print str2.contents.value
world

挺无聊，其实就是想通过这个例子弄清楚ctypes中常用类型的类型转换。