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| author |   Antoine Pitrou <solipsis@pitrou.net> | 2010-09-28 23:39:41 +0000 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Antoine Pitrou <solipsis@pitrou.net> | 2010-09-28 23:39:41 +0000 |
| commit | f7ba2fa3d663c5755af0932e0d8fe820fb7de8af (patch) | |
| tree | cc20c969386846e73237f146de64f9cd9372ab81 /Doc/c-api/buffer.rst | |
| parent | Various improvements to the docs of the buffer API (diff) | |
| download | cpython-f7ba2fa3d663c5755af0932e0d8fe820fb7de8af.tar.gz cpython-f7ba2fa3d663c5755af0932e0d8fe820fb7de8af.tar.bz2 cpython-f7ba2fa3d663c5755af0932e0d8fe820fb7de8af.zip | |
Buffers are not sequence objects (!). Put them in the abstract objects layers
instead.
Diffstat (limited to 'Doc/c-api/buffer.rst')
| -rw-r--r-- | Doc/c-api/buffer.rst | 27 |
1 files changed, 14 insertions, 13 deletions
diff --git a/Doc/c-api/buffer.rst b/Doc/c-api/buffer.rst index 8b64e6c9e47..dbd1e4d14a7 100644 --- a/Doc/c-api/buffer.rst +++ b/Doc/c-api/buffer.rst @@ -2,8 +2,8 @@ .. _bufferobjects: -Buffer API ----------- +Buffer Protocol +--------------- .. sectionauthor:: Greg Stein <gstein@lyra.org> .. sectionauthor:: Benjamin Peterson @@ -50,21 +50,22 @@ How the buffer interface is exposed by a type object is described in the section :ref:`buffer-structs`, under the description for :ctype:`PyBufferProcs`. -Buffer objects -============== +The buffer structure +==================== -Buffer objects are useful as a way to expose the binary data from another -object to the Python programmer. They can also be used as a zero-copy -slicing mechanism. Using their ability to reference a block of memory, it is -possible to expose any data to the Python programmer quite easily. The memory -could be a large, constant array in a C extension, it could be a raw block of -memory for manipulation before passing to an operating system library, or it -could be used to pass around structured data in its native, in-memory format. +Buffer structures (or simply "buffers") are useful as a way to expose the +binary data from another object to the Python programmer. They can also be +used as a zero-copy slicing mechanism. Using their ability to reference a +block of memory, it is possible to expose any data to the Python programmer +quite easily. The memory could be a large, constant array in a C extension, +it could be a raw block of memory for manipulation before passing to an +operating system library, or it could be used to pass around structured data +in its native, in-memory format. -Contrary to most data types exposed by the Python interpreter, buffer objects +Contrary to most data types exposed by the Python interpreter, buffers are not :ctype:`PyObject` pointers but rather simple C structures. This allows them to be created and copied very simply. When a generic wrapper -around a buffer object is needed, a :ref:`memoryview <memoryviewobjects>` object +around a buffer is needed, a :ref:`memoryview <memoryviewobjects>` object can be created. |