David Cournapeau wrote:
I am about to push in SVN the first version of a small package to compute lpc coefficients and lpc residual. I spent most of the time trying to understand how to handle non contiguous arrays in various parts of the C code... Now, I am wondering: does it really worth the trouble ? I noticed that most of the time, it is even faster (and obviously much easier to code/debug/test, and much more reliable) to just copy the data in a contiguous new array before processing with a C function expecting contiguous array... Is there a general policy regarding thoses issues for scipy ? Is it enough to write simple C extensions expecting contiguous arrays, and converting input to contiguous layout if necessary ?
Well, I do it the simple way - you usually loose more time figuring out the c-code for general arrays then ensuring contiguous arrays in Python. Premature optimization is bad, so unless your code consumes too much memory or is too slow (in reality), there is no need to wrestle with complex C extensions. just my 2 cents and imho, r. ps: not sure if there is a general policy - people's cases do differ.