How to return array from C++ function to Python using ctypes
function.cpp
returns an int array, while wrapper.py
tries to interpret them as doubles. Change ArrayType
to ctypes.c_int * 10
and it should work.
It's probably easier to just use np.ctypeslib
instead of frombuffer
yourself. This should look something like
import ctypesfrom numpy.ctypeslib import ndpointerlib = ctypes.CDLL('./library.so')lib.function.restype = ndpointer(dtype=ctypes.c_int, shape=(10,))res = lib.function()
Your python code will work after some minor modifications:
import ctypesf = ctypes.CDLL('./library.so').functionf.restype = ctypes.POINTER(ctypes.c_int * 10)print [i for i in f().contents] # output: [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
Basically there are two changes:
remove numpy-related code and
ctypes.cast
call since we don't need them.specify the return type to
ctypes.POINTER(ctypes.c_int * 10)
.By default foreign functions are assumed to return the C int type, hence we need change it to the desired pointer type.
BTW, returning a new
ed array from C code to Python code seems inappropriate. Who and when will free the memory? It's better to create arrays in Python code and pass them to C code. This way it's clear that the Python code owns the arrays and takes the responsibility of creating and reclaiming their spaces.