[Python-Dev] Looking for master thesis ideas involving Python
Michael Hudson
mwh at python.net
Fri Oct 31 06:42:52 EST 2003
"Brett C." <bac at OCF.Berkeley.EDU> writes:
>> I take it from your posting of last week that you've thought about
>> other ways of implementing exception handling? I guess a
>> non-reference count based GC is a prerequisite for that...
>>
>
> Yeah, I have tossed the exception handling idea around in my head a
> little, but the culmination was what I posted.
>
> And a non-refcount GC would definitely help, even if the exception
> handling wasn't changed. More places where you could just return NULL
> instead of having to deal with DECREFing objects.
And reducing the memory overhead of objects.
Here's my crazy idea that's been knocking around my head for a while.
I wonder if anyone can shoot in down in flames.
Remove the ob_type field from all PyObjects. Make pymalloc mandatory,
make it use type specific pools and store a pointer to the type object
at the start of each pool.
So instead of
p->ob_type
it's
*(p&MASK)
I think having each type in its own pools would also let you lose the
gc_next & gc_prev fields.
Combined with a non-refcount GC, you could hammer sizeof(PyIntObject)
down to sizeof(long)!
(Actually, a potential killer is assigning to __class__ -- maybe you
could only do this for heaptypes)
Cheers,
mwh
--
To summarise the summary of the summary:- people are a problem.
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