ctypes.c_char gives a misleading error when passed a one-character unicode string

[BlckKnght]

BPO	17991
Nosy	@amauryfa, @vstinner, @meadori, @BlckKnght
Superseder	bpo-22161: Remove unsupported code from ctypes

^{Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.}

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GitHub fields:

assignee = None
closed_at = <Date 2015-07-29.07:00:28.087>
created_at = <Date 2013-05-16.03:21:57.548>
labels = ['ctypes', 'type-feature']
title = 'ctypes.c_char gives a misleading error when passed a one-character unicode string'
updated_at = <Date 2015-07-29.09:51:43.265>
user = 'https://github.com/BlckKnght'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2015-07-29.09:51:43.265>
actor = 'vstinner'
assignee = 'none'
closed = True
closed_date = <Date 2015-07-29.07:00:28.087>
closer = 'Steven.Barker'
components = ['ctypes']
creation = <Date 2013-05-16.03:21:57.548>
creator = 'Steven.Barker'
dependencies = []
files = []
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 17991
keywords = []
message_count = 3.0
messages = ['189338', '190487', '247561']
nosy_count = 5.0
nosy_names = ['amaury.forgeotdarc', 'vstinner', 'meador.inge', 'Steven.Barker', 'jamadagni']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'duplicate'
stage = None
status = 'closed'
superseder = '22161'
type = 'enhancement'
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue17991'
versions = ['Python 3.3']

[BlckKnght]

While investigating a Stack Overflow question (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16484764/multiprocessing-value-clear-syntax) I came across a misleading error message from the multiprocessing.Value constructor:

>>> import multiprocessing
>>> my_char = "x"
>>> v = multiprocessing.Value("c", my_char)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#21>", line 1, in <module>
    v = multiprocessing.Value("c", my_char)
  File "S:\Python33\lib\multiprocessing\__init__.py", line 243, in Value
    return Value(typecode_or_type, *args, lock=lock)
  File "S:\Python33\lib\multiprocessing\sharedctypes.py", line 70, in Value
    obj = RawValue(typecode_or_type, *args)
  File "S:\Python33\lib\multiprocessing\sharedctypes.py", line 47, in RawValue
    obj.__init__(*args)
TypeError: one character string expected

The "one character string expected" message was rather unhelpful, since that seemed to be what I gave it. After being stumped by this for a bit, I realized that it might be having an issue with Unicode and giving an error message more appropriate to Python 2 than Python 3. Sure enough, passing a one-character bytes instance works just fine.

So, at a minimum I think the error message should be updated to say it wants a one-character bytes instance rather than a "string" (which to my mind means a "str" instance). A further enhancement might be to accept unicode strings that contain just a single ASCII character too, but I realize that may be more messy and error prone.

The error message comes from the ctypes module, and can be reproduced easily:

>>> ctypes.c_char("x")
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#28>", line 1, in <module>
    ctypes.c_char("x")
TypeError: one character string expected

The exception text comes from Modules/_ctypes/cfield.c:1151

[jamadagni]

I came upon this too. In Python 2 it used to expect a one character string. Apparently the same error message has been carried forward to Python 3 too, though now the actual expected input is either a one character bytes type and not a str type, or an int corresponding to the ord() value of that char.

Minimal demonstration:

$ python
Python 2.7.4 (default, Apr 19 2013, 18:28:01) 
[GCC 4.7.3] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> from ctypes import *
>>> class test ( Structure ) :
...     _fields_ = [ ( "ch", c_char ) ]
... 
>>> a = test()
>>> a.ch = ord('a')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: one character string expected
>>> a.ch = 'c'
>>> a.ch
'c'
>>> 

$ python3
Python 3.3.1 (default, Apr 17 2013, 22:30:32) 
[GCC 4.7.3] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> from ctypes import *
>>> class test ( Structure ) :
...     _fields_ = [ ( "ch", c_char ) ]
... 
>>> a = test()
>>> a.ch = 'c'
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: one character string expected
>>> a.ch = b'c'
>>> a.ch
b'c'
>>> a.ch = ord('c')
>>> a.ch
b'c'
>>>

[BlckKnght]

I was looking over some of the bugs I've contributed to, and it looks like this one has been fixed. It should be marked as a dupe of bpo-22161 and closed (I can close, but not set a superseder, it seems).