Add special support for writing bytes to waveforms

Author: Araneidae

softioc/builder.py

@@ -121,7 +121,7 @@ def Action(name, **fields):
     'l':    'LONG',         # int_
     'f':    'FLOAT',        # single
     'd':    'DOUBLE',       # float_
-#     'S':    'STRING',       # str_
+# noqa    'S':    'STRING',       # str_
 
     # The following type codes are weakly supported by pretending that
     # they're related types.
@@ -138,7 +138,7 @@ def Action(name, **fields):
 
 # Coverts FTVL string to numpy type
 DbfStringToNumpy = {
-#     'STRING':   numpy.dtype('S40'),       # Don't think we want this!
+# noqa    'STRING':   numpy.dtype('S40'),       # Don't think we want this!
     'CHAR':     numpy.dtype('int8'),
     'UCHAR':    numpy.dtype('uint8'),
     'SHORT':    numpy.dtype('int16'),

softioc/device.py

@@ -315,6 +315,9 @@ class ao(ProcessDeviceSupportOut):
 
 
 def _require_waveform(value, dtype):
+    if isinstance(value, bytes):
+        # Special case hack for byte arrays.  Surprisingly tricky:
+        value = numpy.frombuffer(value, dtype = numpy.uint8)
     value = numpy.require(value, dtype = dtype)
     if value.shape == ():
         value.shape = (1,)