Stefan Krah added the comment: The decision was made in order to be able to cast back and forth between known formats. Otherwise one would be able to cast from '<d' to 'B' but not from 'B' to '<d'.
Python 3.4 will have support for all formats in struct module syntax, but all non-native formats will be *far* slower than the native ones. You can still pack/unpack directly using the struct module: >>> import ctypes, struct >>> d = ctypes.c_double() >>> m = memoryview(d) >>> struct.pack_into(m.format, m, 0, 22.7) >>> struct.unpack_from(m.format, m, 0)[0] 22.7 ---------- _______________________________________ Python tracker <rep...@bugs.python.org> <http://bugs.python.org/issue15944> _______________________________________ _______________________________________________ Python-bugs-list mailing list Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-bugs-list/archive%40mail-archive.com