PyArray_SimpleNewFromData example

Question

I know that this thing has been answered a lot of times and I have also read the documentation as well but still I am not able to clearly understand how is this working. As in, I am not able to understand how the values are populated in its arguments. The examples are not very clearly explaining it(or may be I am not able to). Can anyone please help me understand how are the arguments of this function populated? What should be their values? I have to pass a vector from C++ to Python without reallocating the memory. Any help is much appreciated. I am stuck on this from a lot of days.

My code which I am implementing:

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
PyObject *pName, *pModule, *pDict, *pFunc, *pValue, *pArgs,*pXVec,*c, *xarr1;
int i;
float fArray[5] = {0,1,2,3,4};
//float *p = &fArray[0] ;
npy_intp m = 5;
//void* PyArray_GetPtr(PyArrayObject* aobj, npy_intp* ind)¶


// Initialize the Python Interpreter
Py_Initialize();
PySys_SetArgv(argc, argv); 
// Build the name object
pName = PyString_FromString(argv[1]);

// Load the module object
pModule = PyImport_Import(pName);
printf("check0\n");
// pDict is a borrowed reference 
pDict = PyModule_GetDict(pModule);
printf("check1\n");
// pFunc is also a borrowed reference 
pFunc = PyDict_GetItemString(pDict, argv[2]);
printf("check2\n");
//    if (PyCallable_Check(pFunc)) 
//    {
// Prepare the argument list for the call
//xarr1 = PyFloat_FromDouble(xarr[1]);
    printf("check3\n");
c = PyArray_SimpleNewFromData(1,&m,NPY_FLOAT,(void *)fArray);
printf("check3\n");
    pArgs = PyTuple_New(1);
    PyTuple_SetItem(pArgs,0, c);    

    pValue = PyObject_CallObject(pFunc, pArgs);

    if (pArgs != NULL)
    {
        Py_DECREF(pArgs);
    }

//}
//   else 
//    {
//        PyErr_Print();
//    }

// Clean up
Py_DECREF(pModule);
Py_DECREF(pName);

// Finish the Python Interpreter
Py_Finalize();

return 0;
}

Answer 1

The function is:

 PyObject *
    PyArray_SimpleNewFromData(
        int nd, 
        npy_intp* dims, 
        int typenum, 
         void* data)

• The last argument (data) is a buffer to the data. Let's dispense with that.

• The second argument (dims) is a buffer, whose each entry is a dimension; so for a 1d array, it could be a length-1 buffer (or even an integer, since each integer is a length-1 buffer)

• Since the second argument is a buffer, the first argument (nd) tells its length

• The third argument (typenum) indicates the type.

---

For example, say you have 4 64-bit ints at x:

To create an array, use

int dims[1];
dims[0] = 4;
PyArray_SimpleNewFromData(1, dims, NPY_INT64, x)

To create a 2X2 matrix, use

int dims[2];
dims[0] = dims[1] = 2;
PyArray_SimpleNewFromData(2, dims, NPY_INT64, x)

Answer 2

Make sure that you plug the memory leak that the above approach entrails. I am guessing in the above x is a pointer of type void *. Check this out.