How can I reference #defines in a C file from python?

Question

I have a C file that has a bunch of #defines for bits that I\'d like to reference from python. There\'s enough of them that I\'d rather not copy them into my python code, i

Answer 1

#defines are macros, that have no meaning whatsoever outside of your C compiler's preprocessor. As such, they are the bane of multi-language programmers everywhere. (For example, see this Ada question: Setting the license for modules in the linux kernel from two weeks ago).

Short of running your source code through the C-preprocessor, there really is no good way to deal with them. I typically just figure out what they evalutate to (in complex cases, often there's no better way to do this than to actually compile and run the damn code!), and hard-code that value into my program.

The (well one of the) annoying parts is that the C preprocessor is considered by C coders to be a very simple little thing that they often use without even giving a second thought to. As a result, they tend to be shocked that it causes big problems for interoperability, while we can deal with most other problems C throws at us fairly easily.

In the simple case shown above, by far the easiest way to handle it would be to encode the same two values in constants in your python program somewhere. If keeping up with changes is a big deal, it probably wouldn't be too much trouble to write a Python program to parse those values out of the file. However, you'd have to realise that your C code would only re-evaluate those values on a compile, while your python program would do it whenever it runs (and thus should probably only be run when the C code is also compiled).