MemoryStream analog in Python

Question

Does some analog of C# MemoryStream exist in Python (that could allow me to write binary data from some source direct into memory)? And how would I go about using it?

Answer 1

StringIO is one possibility: http://docs.python.org/library/stringio.html

This module implements a file-like class, StringIO , that reads and writes a string buffer (also known as memory files ). See the description of file objects for operations (section File Objects ). (For standard strings, see str and unicode .)...

Answer 2

If you are using Python >= 3.0 and tried out Adam's answer , you will notice that import StringIO or import cStringIO both give an import error. This is because StringIO is now part of the io module .

Python 3.4.0 (default, Apr 11 2014, 13:05:11) 
[GCC 4.8.2] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import StringIO
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ImportError: No module named 'StringIO'
>>> # Huh? Maybe this will work...
... 
>>> import cStringIO
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ImportError: No module named 'cStringIO'
>>> # Whaaaa...?
... 
>>> import io
>>> io.StringIO
<class '_io.StringIO'>
>>> # Oh, good!
... 

You can use StringIO just as if it was a regular Python file: write() , close() , and all that jazz, with an additional getvalue() to retrieve the string.