Sorry, forget to mention that I am working on version 3.4 Following the steps given in Chris's reply, I get the result from bytes string:
>>> b1 = b'\x80abc' >>> ctypes.cast(id(b1), ctypes.c_voidp) c_void_p(35495992) >>> sys.getsizeof(b1) 21 >>> b1ptr = ctypes.cast(id(b1), ctypes.POINTER(ctypes.c_uint8)) >>> bytes([b1ptr[i] for i in range(21)]) b'\x01\x00\x00\x00X\xa1e^\x04\x00\x00\x00\x04\xff\x04&\x80abc\x00' >>> It obviously has the same "content" as the s1 string has and the object's structure are much different as expected (77 vs 21 bytes:-) If I do this as Ned suggested: >>> b2 = b1 I get: >>> bytes([b1ptr[i] for i in range(21)]) b'\x02\x00\x00\x00X\xa1e^\x04\x00\x00\x00\x04\xff\x04&\x80abc\x00' >>> So, at least, we know where the reference count was stored:-) It's amazing the "tool" is so simple. Actually I feel a little embarrassed that I do know every statements in it but just no idea of combining them together. Thanks a lot, Chris. --Jach -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
