While sitting on a mushroom and contemplating the intricacies of inscribing a function to implement Python's name mangling algorithm, a stupendously better idea came into my noggin. Why not use the recipe already crafted into the language to accomplish such a goal? So I pulled ctypes out of my satchel to help with the endeavor and executed ctypes.pythonapi._Py_Mangle('Demo', '__test'). Lo and behold, an error appeared out of thin air saying OSError: exception: access violation reading 0x00000A65646F00A8 and did not bother to explain the conundrum any more than that.
The full interaction with the interpreter is as follows:
Python 3.4.2 (v3.4.2:ab2c023a9432, Oct 6 2014, 22:16:31) [MSC v.1600 64 bit (AMD64)] on win32
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license()" for more information.
>>> import ctypes
>>> ctypes.pythonapi._Py_Mangle('Demo', '__test')
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<pyshell#1>", line 1, in <module>
ctypes.pythonapi._Py_Mangle('Demo', '__test')
OSError: exception: access violation reading 0x00000A65646F00A8
Does anyone know what needs to be changed in order to call the mangling function successfully?
Thanks to comments by eryksun, the answer to the problem is rather simple:
>>> from ctypes import pythonapi, py_object
>>> py_mangle = pythonapi._Py_Mangle
>>> py_mangle.argtypes = py_object, py_object
>>> py_mangle.restype = py_object
>>> py_mangle('Demo', '__test')
'_Demo__test'