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1.3 Back to the Example

Going back to our example function, you should now be able to understand this statement:

          if (!PyArg_ParseTuple(args, "s", &command))
              return NULL;

It returns `NULL` (the error indicator for functions returning object pointers) if an error is detected in the argument list, relying on the exception set by `PyArg_ParseTuple()`. Otherwise the string value of the argument has been copied to the local variable `command`. This is a pointer assignment and you are not supposed to modify the string to which it points (so in Standard C, the variable `command` should properly be declared as "`const char *command`").

The next statement is a call to the Unix function `system()`, passing it the string we just got from `PyArg_ParseTuple()`:

          sts = system(command);

Our `spam.system()` function must return the value of `sts` as a Python object. This is done using the function `Py_BuildValue()`, which is something like the inverse of `PyArg_ParseTuple()`: it takes a format string and an arbitrary number of C values, and returns a new Python object. More info on `Py_BuildValue()` is given later.

          return Py_BuildValue("i", sts);

In this case, it will return an integer object. (Yes, even integers are objects on the heap in Python!)

If you have a C function that returns no useful argument (a function returning `void`), the corresponding Python function must return `None`. You need this idiom to do so:

          Py_INCREF(Py_None);
          return Py_None;

`Py_None` is the C name for the special Python object `None`. It is a genuine Python object rather than a `NULL` pointer, which means ``error'' in most contexts, as we have seen.