[Python-Dev] Internal representation of strings and Micropython

[Paul Sokolovsky]

Hello,

On Fri, 06 Jun 2014 09:32:25 +0100
Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> On 04/06/2014 16:52, Mark Lawrence wrote:
> > On 04/06/2014 16:32, Steve Dower wrote:
> >>
> >> If copying into a separate list is a problem (memory-wise),
> >> re.finditer('\\S+', string) also provides the same behaviour and
> >> gives me the sliced string, so there's no need to index for
> >> anything.
> >>
> >
> > Out of idle curiosity is there anything that stops MicroPython, or
> > any other implementation for that matter, from providing views of a
> > string rather than copying every time?  IIRC memoryviews in CPython
> > rely on the buffer protocol at the C API level, so since strings
> > don't support this protocol you can't take a memoryview of them.
> > Could this actually be implemented in the future, is the underlying
> > C code just too complicated, or what?
> >
> 
> Anybody?

I'd like to address this, and other, buffer manipulation
optimization ideas I have for MicroPython at some time later. But as
you suggest, it would possible to transparently have
"strings-by-reference". The reasons MicroPython doesn't have such so
far (and why I'm, as a uPy contributor, not ready to discuss them) is
because they're optimization, and everyone knows what premature
optimization is.

[]

-- 
Best regards,
 Paul                          mailto:pmiscml at gmail.com