Please add documentation of the bitfield ordering for ctypes.Structure types
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Description
Documentation
The current documentation for ctypes bit fields is very limited and doesn't cover the definition order. AFAICT this is:
Little endian - LSB first -> MSB last
Big endian - MSB first -> LSB last
Native - ??? This is LSB first -> MSB last on x86 but is that just because it's a little endian architecture?
For example:
class BigOnes(BigEndianStructure):
_pack_ = 1
_fields_ = (
("bit_0", c_uint16, 1), # MSBit
("bit_1", c_uint16, 1),
("bit_2", c_uint16, 1),
("bit_3", c_uint16, 1),
("nibble_1", c_uint16, 4),
("nibble_2", c_uint16, 4),
("nibble_3", c_uint16, 4), # LSBit
("byte_3", c_uint16, 8), # MSByte
("byte_4", c_uint16, 8), # LSByte
)
Versus:
class LittleOnes(LittleEndianStructure):
_pack_ = 1
_fields_ = (
("bit_0", c_uint16, 1), # LSBit
("bit_1", c_uint16, 1),
("bit_2", c_uint16, 1),
("bit_3", c_uint16, 1),
("nibble_1", c_uint16, 4),
("nibble_2", c_uint16, 4),
("nibble_3", c_uint16, 4), # MSBit
("byte_3", c_uint16, 8), # LSByte
("byte_4", c_uint16, 8), # MSByte
)
Contributor guide
First steps
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- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start with the ctypes documentation for Structure, BigEndianStructure, and LittleEndianStructure, using the provided bitfield examples as the cases to explain. Determine and document definition order for little-endian, big-endian, and native structures, including the architecture-dependent behavior, and verify that the resulting text is unambiguous.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- python
- Domain
- documentation
- Issue type
- Documentation
- Difficulty
- 3/5
- Estimated time
- 1-2 days
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 38/100