Caterpillar is a Python 3.12+ library to pack and unpack structurized binary data. It enhances the capabilities of Python Struct by enabling direct class declaration. More information about the different configuration options will be added in the future. Documentation is here >.

Caterpillar is able to:

• Pack and unpack data just from processing Python class definitions (including support for bitfields, c++-like templates and c-like unions!),
• apply a wide range of data types (with endianess and architecture configuration),
• dynamically adapt structs based on their inheritance layout,
• reduce the used memory space using __slots__,
• allowing you to place conditional statements into class definitions,
• insert proper types into the class definition to support documentation and
• it helps you to create cleaner and more compact code.
• You can even extend Caterpillar and write your parsing logic in C or C++!!

Simply use pip to install the package with all tools, all extra packages and the C extension:

pip install "caterpillar[all]@git+https://github.com/MatrixEditor/caterpillar.git"

If you just want to use the Python package without any native modules written in C, you can specify the following environment variables:

• CP_DISABLE_NATIVE - Disables installation of the native C extension
• CP_DISABLE_TOOLS - Disables installation of extra tools

For instance, the following command will install the caterpillar package without a native interface and without extra tools:

CP_DISABLE_NATIVE=TRUE \
CP_DISABLE_TOOLS=TRUE \
pip install git+https://github.com/MatrixEditor/caterpillar

Please visit the Documentation, it contains a complete tutorial on how to use this library.

A list of similar approaches to parsing structured binary data with Python can be taken from below:

• construct
• kaitai_struct
• hachoir
• mrcrowbar

The documentation also provides a Comparison to these approaches.

Distributed under the GNU General Public License (V3). See License for more information.