[Python-Dev] 64-bit process optimization 1

Martin v. Loewis martin@v.loewis.de
10 Sep 2002 00:33:20 +0200


Guido van Rossum <guido@python.org> writes:

> So perhaps the refcnt should have been a long in the first place.  A
> similar argument may hold for the length of e.g. strings and lists:
> one could wish to have a list of more than 2 billion elements, or a
> string containing more than 2 gigabytes (that much RAM is easily found
> on the larger 64-bit servers, I believe).
> 
> Opinions?

I agree with that position, and Tim's, that those fields should widen
to 64 bits on a 64-bit system. I disagree that size_t is suitable for
ob_size, since some types put negative values into ob_size. The signed
version of that, ssize_t, is not universally available, so we'd need
to add Py_ssize_t.

Regards,
Martin