This is mostly a demo of mixing C into python, just a little more fun than the typicall "hello world" and "spam" example modules. There is actual documentation for this, and don't worry, I won't make you read the whole thing, just sections 1.1, 1.3 only if you're confused, 1.4, then click the first link in 1.5 but only read up through the second code block unless you're a total nerd.

C can do lots of stuff that python can't, mainly it's pretty fast, which is nice if you have some bottleneck in your python scripts.

Of course speed isn't all that C offers, you can do other amazing things, like access whatever memory you want. Damn the torpedoes!

So next time some snobby systems developer points to a segfault and asks "Can your python do this?!" show them what's up.

python setup.py install; \
echo lol, always forget; \
sudo python setup.py install

The segfault module provides only one method:

segfault.segfault(startString)

This method reads the string passed to it, but doesn't heed to silly things like null terminators that deter inferior string-reading methods. This one stops for nothing! It will print the byte index and the character there with verbose expansions for special and non-printable characters.

Passing an empty string supresses this output and memory bytes will only be copied into a buffer with no output.

Generate a segfault quietly:

python -c "import segfault; segfault.segfault('')"

Scroll through over 400KB at one line per byte, there's a surprise at the end:

python -c "import segfault; segfault.segfault('lol')"

Just a taste of the fun:

head <(python -c "import segfault; segfault.segfault('lol')"); \
echo "..."; \
tail <(python -c "import segfault; segfault.segfault('lol')"; exit="$?"; echo; man 7 signal | grep $(($exit-128)))