you could write a C++ function to marshal a Sequence (or any Container IIRC, maybe Forward Container) to a vector (or whatever you wanted -- there are choices), and then okay let's see if I remember C++ well enough This design has extra copying. but anyway template<typename Container> std::vector<typename Container::value_type> container_to_vector(Container const& c) { return std::vector<typename Container::value_type>(c.begin(), c.end()); } and template<typename Container> Container vector_to_sequence(std::vector<typename Container::value_type> const& c) { return Container(c.begin(), c.end()); } extern "C" { /* the temporary returned variable doesn't last long enough here */ (char*, int)/*I know C++ doesn't have this syntax of tuples*/ string_to_array(std::string const& s) { return (&*container_to_vector(s).begin()) } } In other words I suspect that it's possible with a minimum of boilerplate per type, (possibly including the use of macros), but I'm not sure exactly what you need to do, and I got tired of being a C++-fu expert a few years ago