String conversion and formatting

Functions for number conversion and formatted string output.

int PyOS_snprintf(char *str, size_t size, const char *format, ...)
Part of the Stable ABI.

Output not more than size bytes to str according to the format string format and the extra arguments. See the Unix man page snprintf(3).

int PyOS_vsnprintf(char *str, size_t size, const char *format, va_list va)
Part of the Stable ABI.

Output not more than size bytes to str according to the format string format and the variable argument list va. Unix man page vsnprintf(3).

PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() wrap the Standard C library functions snprintf() and vsnprintf(). Their purpose is to guarantee consistent behavior in corner cases, which the Standard C functions do not.

The wrappers ensure that str[size-1] is always '\0' upon return. They never write more than size bytes (including the trailing '\0') into str. Both functions require that str != NULL, size > 0, format != NULL and size < INT_MAX. Note that this means there is no equivalent to the C99 n = snprintf(NULL, 0, ...) which would determine the necessary buffer size.

The return value (rv) for these functions should be interpreted as follows:

  • When 0 <= rv < size, the output conversion was successful and rv characters were written to str (excluding the trailing '\0' byte at str[rv]).

  • When rv >= size, the output conversion was truncated and a buffer with rv + 1 bytes would have been needed to succeed. str[size-1] is '\0' in this case.

  • When rv < 0, “something bad happened.” str[size-1] is '\0' in this case too, but the rest of str is undefined. The exact cause of the error depends on the underlying platform.

The following functions provide locale-independent string to number conversions.

double PyOS_string_to_double(const char *s, char **endptr, PyObject *overflow_exception)
Part of the Stable ABI.

Convert a string s to a double, raising a Python exception on failure. The set of accepted strings corresponds to the set of strings accepted by Python’s float() constructor, except that s must not have leading or trailing whitespace. The conversion is independent of the current locale.

If endptr is NULL, convert the whole string. Raise ValueError and return -1.0 if the string is not a valid representation of a floating-point number.

If endptr is not NULL, convert as much of the string as possible and set *endptr to point to the first unconverted character. If no initial segment of the string is the valid representation of a floating-point number, set *endptr to point to the beginning of the string, raise ValueError, and return -1.0.

If s represents a value that is too large to store in a float (for example, "1e500" is such a string on many platforms) then if overflow_exception is NULL return Py_HUGE_VAL (with an appropriate sign) and don’t set any exception. Otherwise, overflow_exception must point to a Python exception object; raise that exception and return -1.0. In both cases, set *endptr to point to the first character after the converted value.

If any other error occurs during the conversion (for example an out-of-memory error), set the appropriate Python exception and return -1.0.

New in version 3.1.

char *PyOS_double_to_string(double val, char format_code, int precision, int flags, int *ptype)
Part of the Stable ABI.

Convert a double val to a string using supplied format_code, precision, and flags.

format_code must be one of 'e', 'E', 'f', 'F', 'g', 'G' or 'r'. For 'r', the supplied precision must be 0 and is ignored. The 'r' format code specifies the standard repr() format.

flags can be zero or more of the values Py_DTSF_SIGN, Py_DTSF_ADD_DOT_0, or Py_DTSF_ALT, or-ed together:

  • Py_DTSF_SIGN means to always precede the returned string with a sign character, even if val is non-negative.

  • Py_DTSF_ADD_DOT_0 means to ensure that the returned string will not look like an integer.

  • Py_DTSF_ALT means to apply “alternate” formatting rules. See the documentation for the PyOS_snprintf() '#' specifier for details.

If ptype is non-NULL, then the value it points to will be set to one of Py_DTST_FINITE, Py_DTST_INFINITE, or Py_DTST_NAN, signifying that val is a finite number, an infinite number, or not a number, respectively.

The return value is a pointer to buffer with the converted string or NULL if the conversion failed. The caller is responsible for freeing the returned string by calling PyMem_Free().

New in version 3.1.

int PyOS_stricmp(const char *s1, const char *s2)

Case insensitive comparison of strings. The function works almost identically to strcmp() except that it ignores the case.

int PyOS_strnicmp(const char *s1, const char *s2, Py_ssize_t size)

Case insensitive comparison of strings. The function works almost identically to strncmp() except that it ignores the case.