The module cStringIO provides an interface similar to that of
the StringIO module. Heavy use of StringIO.StringIO
objects can be made more efficient by using the function
StringIO() from this module instead.
Since this module provides a factory function which returns objects of
built-in types, there's no way to build your own version using
subclassing. Use the original StringIO module in that case.
Unlike the memory files implemented by the StringIO
module, those provided by this module are not able to accept Unicode
strings that cannot be encoded as plain ASCII strings.
Another difference from the StringIO module is that calling
StringIO() with a string parameter creates a read-only object.
Unlike an object created without a string parameter, it does not have
write methods. These objects are not generally visible. They turn up in
tracebacks as StringI and StringO.
The following data objects are provided as well:
InputType
The type object of the objects created by calling
StringIO with a string parameter.
OutputType
The type object of the objects returned by calling
StringIO with no parameters.
There is a C API to the module as well; refer to the module source for
more information.
Example usage:
import cStringIO
output = cStringIO.StringIO()
output.write('First line.\n')
print >>output, 'Second line.'
# Retrieve file contents -- this will be
# 'First line.\nSecond line.\n'
contents = output.getvalue()
# Close object and discard memory buffer --
# .getvalue() will now raise an exception.
output.close()
