The method .getbuffer() is commonly used in Python with io.BytesIO or io.StringIO objects.

📌 What it does

• .getbuffer() returns a memoryview object of the underlying buffer (the raw data) without making a copy.

• This means you can access, read, or manipulate the buffer contents directly in memory—very efficient!

🔑 Key points

• Works only on binary streams like io.BytesIO, not StringIO.

• No data copy → faster and memory-efficient compared to .getvalue().

• You can slice, read, or modify data directly.

✅ Example

import io

# Create a BytesIO stream
stream = io.BytesIO(b"Hello World")

# Get buffer (memoryview)
buffer = stream.getbuffer()

print(buffer)             # <memory at 0x...>
print(buffer.tobytes())   # b'Hello World'
print(buffer[0:5])        # b'Hello'

# Modify buffer directly
buffer[0:5] = b"Hi!!!"
print(stream.getvalue())  # b'Hi!!! World'

⚡ Difference: .getvalue() vs .getbuffer()

👉 So, .getbuffer() is mainly used when you need zero-copy access to a BytesIO buffer.