Python c_types .dll functions (pari library)

Question

Alright, so a couple days ago I decided to try and write a primitive wrapper for the PARI library. Ever since then I've been playing with ctypes library in loading the dll and accessing the functions contained using code similar to the following:

from ctypes import *
libcyg=CDLL("<path/cygwin1.dll") #It needs cygwin to be loaded. Not sure why.
pari=CDLL("<path>/libpari-gmp-2.4.dll")

print pari.fibo #fibonacci function
#prints something like "<_FuncPtr object at 0x00BA5828>"

So the functions are there and they can potentially be accessed, but I always receive an access violation no matter what I try. For example:

pari.fibo(5) #access violation
pari.fibo(c_int(5)) #access violation

pari.fibo.argtypes = [c_long] #setting arguments manually
pari.fibo.restype = long #set the return type

pari.fibo(byref(c_int(5))) #access violation reading 0x04 consistently

and any variation on that, including setting argtypes to receive pointers.

The Pari .dll is written in C and the fibonacci function's syntax within the library is GEN fibo(long x).

Could it be the return type that's causing these errors, as it is not a standard int or long but a GEN type, which is unique to the PARI library? Any help would be appreciated. If anyone is able to successfully load the library and use ANY function from within python, please tell; I've been at this for hours now.

EDIT: Seems as though I was simply forgetting to initialize the library. After a quick pari.pari_init(4000000,500000) it stopped erroring. Now my problem lies in the in the fact that it returns a GEN object; which is fine, but whenever I try to reference the address to which it points, it's always 33554435, which I presume is still an address. I'm trying further commands and I'll update if I succeed in getting the correct value of something.

Answer 1

You have two problems here, one give fibo the correct return type and two convert the GEN return type to the value you are looking for.

Poking around the source code a bit, you'll find that GEN is defined as a pointer to a long. Also, at looks like the library provides some converting/printing GENs. I focused in on GENtostr since it would probably be safer for all the pari functions.

import cytpes
pari = ctypes.CDLL("./libpari.so.2.3.5") #I did this under linux
pari.fibo.restype = ctypes.POINTER(ctypes.c_long)
pari.GENtostr.restype = ctypes.POINTER(ctypes.c_char)    
pari.pari_init(4000000,500000)
x = pari.fibo(100)
y = pari.GENtostr(x)
ctypes.string_at(y)

Results in:

'354224848179261915075'