Passing back an array from an extension module?

[Chris Barker]

Bob Greschke wrote:
> 
> Is this a job for NumPy?
> 
The sort answer is yes this would be pretty straighforward. See Chad
Everett's post.

> I have a C extension function that malloc()s an array of int32s, calls
> another C function which reads/decodes a file of data and fills in the
> array.

My big question is why you don't do the whole thing in NumPy? You may
not need the C code at all, unless the decoding is really wierd. Is it a
compression algorithm or something?

> I initially thought I could just create a tuple and pass
> that back, since nothing is going to be done with the values except to
> draw a graph, but there is the possibility of there being 16,000,000
> data points...that makes for a slightly large statement, doesn't it?

You could also use a list, rather than a tuple, but a NumPy array would
make much more sense. Oh, how I long for it to part of the standard
library.

> Now what about Py_DECREF, INCREF and all of that stuff in these
> situations?

You do have to be a bit careful about these, but what you want to do
sounds pretty straightforward.

-Chris




-- 
Christopher Barker,
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