On 1/12/07, Gael Varoquaux
Talking about the difference between the memory access model and the array API, maybe I am talking bullshit (I know next to nothing in these problems) but couldn' an efficient tree data structure be implemented on the memory buffer object ? I am pretty sure a simple tree read-only could, as for a tree that is edited, I am not so sure.
Trees are nice, but they are not efficient for array type data. Traversing a tree usually requires some sort of stack (recursion), and a tree is not well structured for addressing data using indices. They just aren't appropriate for arrays, arrays are better represented by some sort of lattice. Anyhow read-only tree are used a lot by some people. A lab next to mine
uses them to describe results from there experiment. They store events in tree-like structures (I have been told that copied that from the CERN). They can then walk throught the tree in a very efficient way, and do statistical analysis on their collection of event.
Probably from ROOT? I am not sure if this can fit anywhere in the PEP, but it would sure
enlarge its scope.
There is probably a tree module somewhere for python. Chuck