"""Run-time calculation of offset into Python string structure Does a scan to find the digits of pi in a string structure in order to produce an offset that can be used to produce data-pointers from Python strings. Porting note: Currently this uses id( str a ) to get the base address of the Python string. Python implementations where id( a ) is *not* the memory address of the string will not work! """ import ctypes from OpenGL._bytes import bytes,unicode PI_DIGITS = '31415926535897931' def calculateOffset( ): """Calculates the data-pointer offset for strings This does a sequential scan for 100 bytes from the id of a string to find special data-value stored in the string (the digits of PI). It produces a dataPointer function which adds that offset to the id of the passed strings. """ finalOffset = None a = PI_DIGITS # XXX NOT portable across Python implmentations!!! initial = id(a) targetType = ctypes.POINTER( ctypes.c_char ) for offset in range( 100 ): vector = ctypes.cast( initial+offset,targetType ) allMatched = True for index,digit in enumerate( a ): if vector[index] != digit: allMatched = False break if allMatched: finalOffset = offset break if finalOffset is not None: def dataPointer( data ): """Return the data-pointer from the array using calculated offset data -- a Python string Returns the raw data-pointer to the internal buffer of the passed string """ if not isinstance( data, bytes ): raise TypeError( """This function can only handle Python strings! Got %s"""%( type(data), ) ) return id(data) + finalOffset # just for later reference... dataPointer.offset = finalOffset return dataPointer raise RuntimeError( """Unable to determine dataPointer offset for strings!""" ) dataPointer = calculateOffset() if __name__ == "__main__": a = 'this' print((id(a), dataPointer( a ), dataPointer(a) - id(a)))