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authorGeorg Brandl <georg@python.org>2010-07-10 10:23:40 (GMT)
committerGeorg Brandl <georg@python.org>2010-07-10 10:23:40 (GMT)
commit93eb42e805524cd1375deab520d6f4828e0a4f53 (patch)
treeb69cc37a998116bef8a9c3e5c92b453795a4fbda /Doc/library/struct.rst
parentb382337ed672b06e1f48ff3ba0c3d0173cedb037 (diff)
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Emphasize role of count for Pascal string.
Diffstat (limited to 'Doc/library/struct.rst')
-rw-r--r--Doc/library/struct.rst20
1 files changed, 9 insertions, 11 deletions
diff --git a/Doc/library/struct.rst b/Doc/library/struct.rst
index 4b1ba70..7878a54 100644
--- a/Doc/library/struct.rst
+++ b/Doc/library/struct.rst
@@ -259,18 +259,16 @@ then :exc:`struct.error` is raised.
In 3.0, some of the integer formats wrapped out-of-range values and
raised :exc:`DeprecationWarning` instead of :exc:`struct.error`.
-
The ``'p'`` format character encodes a "Pascal string", meaning a short
-variable-length string stored in a fixed number of bytes. The count is the total
-number of bytes stored. The first byte stored is the length of the string, or
-255, whichever is smaller. The bytes of the string follow. If the string
-passed in to :func:`pack` is too long (longer than the count minus 1), only the
-leading count-1 bytes of the string are stored. If the string is shorter than
-count-1, it is padded with null bytes so that exactly count bytes in all are
-used. Note that for :func:`unpack`, the ``'p'`` format character consumes count
-bytes, but that the string returned can never contain more than 255 bytes.
-
-
+variable-length string stored in a *fixed number of bytes*, given by the count.
+The first byte stored is the length of the string, or 255, whichever is
+smaller. The bytes of the string follow. If the string passed in to
+:func:`pack` is too long (longer than the count minus 1), only the leading
+``count-1`` bytes of the string are stored. If the string is shorter than
+``count-1``, it is padded with null bytes so that exactly count bytes in all
+are used. Note that for :func:`unpack`, the ``'p'`` format character consumes
+``count`` bytes, but that the string returned can never contain more than 255
+bytes.
For the ``'?'`` format character, the return value is either :const:`True` or
:const:`False`. When packing, the truth value of the argument object is used.