[Swig-user] C -> Python, conditional return types?

[Gabriel R. <gab...@ar...>]

Hello everyone,

is it possible to write a function in C, that returns an int, and when 
swig generates the wrapper, if the value is < 0 it returns an int, if 
it's >= 0 it returns a string? For now I return an int and if the value 
 >= 0 I use chr(), I don't know if this is better or not... For example :

in C :

int getByte() {
    if(isEmpty(buffer))
        return -1:
    return buffer[nextChr++];
}

usage in python when the buffer is empty :

 >>> getByte()
-1

and when the buffer is not empty :

 >>> getByte()
'\xea'

I tried using pythonappend but it didn't work, and in typemaps I didn't 
find anything like this (or maybe I missed it?)

Thank you,
Gabriel