================ Design decisions ================ * Generally follow LuaJIT's ffi: http://luajit.org/ext_ffi.html * Be explicit: almost no automatic conversions. Here is the set of automatic conversions: the various C integer types are automatically wrapped and unwrapped to regular applevel integers. The type ``char`` might correspond to single-character strings instead; for integer correspondance you would use ``signed char`` or ``unsigned char``. We might also decide that ``const char *`` automatically maps to strings; for cases where you don't want that, use ``char *``. * Integers are not automatically converted when passed as vararg arguments. You have to use explicitly ``ffi.new("int", 42)`` or ``ffi.new("long", 42)`` to resolve the ambiguity. Floats would be fine (varargs in C can only accept ``double``, not ``float``), but there is again ambiguity between characters and strings. Even with floats the result is a bit strange because passing a float works but passing an integer not. I would fix this once and for all by saying that varargs must *always* be a cdata (from ``ffi.new()``). The possibly acceptable exception would be None (for ``NULL``). * The internal class ``blob`` is used for raw-malloced data. You only get a class that has internally a ``blob`` instance (or maybe is a subclass of ``blob``) by calling ``ffi.new(struct-or-array-type)``. The other cases, namely the cases where the type is a pointer or a primitive, don't need a blob because it's not possible to take their raw address. * It would be possible to add a debug mode: when we cast ``struct foo`` to ``struct foo *`` or store it in some other struct, then we would additionally record a weakref to the original ``struct foo`` blob. If later we try to access the ``struct foo *`` but the weakref shows that the blob was freed, we complain. This is a difference with ctypes, which in these cases would store a strong reference and keep the blob alive. "Explicit is better than implicit", so we ask the user to keep a reference to the original blob alive as long as it may be used (instead of doing the right things in 90% of the cases but still crashing in the remaining 10%). * LuaJIT uses ``struct foo &`` for a number of things, like for ``p[0]`` if ``p`` is a ``struct foo *``. I suppose it's not a bad idea at least to have internally such types, even if you can't specify them through pycparser. Basically ``struct foo &`` is a type that doesn't own a blob, whereas ``struct foo`` is the type that does. * LuaJIT uses ``int[?]`` which pycparser doesn't accept. I propose instead to use ``int[]`` for the same purpose (its use is anyway quite close to the C standard's use of ``int[]``).