Welcome to pointers.py`s documentation!

Bringing the hell of pointers to Python

Examples

from pointers import Pointer, decay

a: str = '123'
b: str = 'abc'

@decay
def move(ptr_a: Pointer[str], ptr_b: Pointer[str]):
    ptr_a <<= ptr_b

move(a, b)
print(a, b) # abc abc
from pointers import _

ptr = _&"hello world" # creates a new pointer object
assert _*ptr == "hello world"
from pointers import fopen, fprintf, fclose

file = fopen("/dev/null", "w") # assigns to the c FILE* type
fprintf(file, "hello world")
fclose(file)

Features

  • Fully type safe
  • Pythonic pointer API
  • Bindings for the entire C standard library and CPython ABI
  • Segfaults

Why does this exist?

The main purpose of pointers.py is to simply break the rules of Python, but has some other use cases:

  • Can help translate C/C++ code into Python
  • Provides a nice learning environment for programmers learning how pointers work
  • Makes it very easy to manipulate memory in Python
  • Why not?