[Python-Dev] Python memory model (low level)

[Nick Maclaren]

"Tim Peters" <tim.peters at gmail.com> wrote:

[ Many useful answers ]

Thanks very much!  That helps.  Here are a few points where we are at
cross-purposes.

I am talking about the C level.  What I am thinking of is the standard
method of implementing the complicated housekeeping of a class (e.g.
inheritance) in Python, and the basic operations in C (for efficiency).
The model that I would like to stick to is that the Python layer never
knows about the actual object implementation, and the C never knows
about the housekeeping.

The housekeeping would include the class derivation, which would (inter
alia) fix the size of a number.  The C code would need to allocate
some space to store various constants and workspace, shared between
all instances of the derived class.  This would be accessible from the
object it returns.

Each instance would be of a length specified by its derivation (i.e.
like Decimal), but would be constant for all members of the class
(i.e. not like long).  So it would be most similar to tuple in that
respect.

Operations like addition would copy the pointer to the class data
from the arguments, and ones like creation would need to be passed
the appropriate class and whatever input data they need.

I believe that, using the above approach, it would be possible to
achieve good efficiency with very little C - certainly, it has worked
in other languages.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren,
University of Cambridge Computing Service,
New Museums Site, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.
Email:  nmm1 at cam.ac.uk
Tel.:  +44 1223 334761    Fax:  +44 1223 334679