Parsing a C header file in Python

Question

Does anyone know a spiffy way to use C header files in Python? For example I have a C program that includes a global variable:

typedef struct ImageInfo
{
    uint8_t revisionMajor;
    uint8_t revisionMinor;
    uint16_t checksum;    

} ImageInfo;

ImageInfo gImageInfo;   /* Placed at a specific address by the linker */

I would like to be able to take the binary generated by the C compiler/linker and parse this structure (and possibly modify it) with a Python script.

Answer 1

Take a look at pygccxml. I use it to build in-memory graphs of my C / C++ source code that I can use as the basis for many code generation tasks.

PS: When I first started out with Python based code-generation I actually tried to write a parser myself: save yourself the pain and don't even go there! (looks like your are clued up already though...) pygccxml is everything you want and more :)

Answer 2

Have a look at this C++ header parser written in Python. You can also write your own parser using any of these tools:

• pyparsing
• ply

• lepl

  and a lot more ...

Answer 3

This was mentioned on SO yesterday; I haven't had a chance to check it out more thoroughly yet, but I'm meaning to. The pycparser, a "C parser and AST generator written in Python".

http://code.google.com/p/pycparser/