I created a very simple C library binding in Python using ctypes. All it does is accept a string and return a string.
I did the development on Ubuntu, and everything looked fine. Unfortunately, on OSX the exact same code fails. I'm completely stumped.
I've put together a minimal case showing the issue I'm having.
import ctypes
# Compile for:
# Linux: `gcc -fPIC -shared hello.c -o hello.so`
# OSX: `gcc -shared hello.c -o hello.so`
lib = ctypes.cdll.LoadLibrary('./hello.so')
# Call the library
ptr = lib.hello("Frank")
data = ctypes.c_char_p(ptr).value # segfault here on OSX only
lib.free_response(ptr)
# Prove it worked
print data
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
// This is the actual binding call.
char* hello(char* name) {
char* response = malloc(sizeof(char) * 100);
strcpy(response, "Hello, ");
strcat(response, name);
strcat(response, "!\n");
return response;
}
// This frees the response memory and must be called by the binding.
void free_response(char *ptr) { free(ptr); }
You should specify the return type of your function. Specifically, declare it to be ctypes.POINTER(ctypes.c_char)
.
import ctypes
lib = ctypes.CDLL('./hello.so')
lib.hello.restype = ctypes.POINTER(ctypes.c_char)
ptr = lib.hello("Frank")
print repr(ctypes.cast(ptr, ctypes.c_char_p).value)
lib.free_response(ptr)