Few questions

[bearophile]

Hello, I have few more things to say/ask (left from a discussion in
another Python Newsgroup).

Is it possibile (and useful) to write few small sub-sections of the
Python interpreter in Assembly for Pentium (III/IV)/AMD, to speed up
the interpreter for Win/Linux boxes running on those CPUs? (Such parts
don't replace the C versions, kept for compatibilty).
I think the HLA (High Level Assembly) language can be fit for this
purpose, it's a cute language:
http://webster.cs.ucr.edu/AsmTools/HLA/index.html

--------

I've done a little comparison of the speed of Python lists and arrays:

# speed_test.py
from time import clock
import sys

def array_test():
    from array import array
    v = array("l", [0] * n)
    t = clock()
    for i in xrange(len(v)):
        v[i] = i
    print "Timing:", round(clock()-t,3), "s"

def list_test():
    v = [0] * n
    t = clock()
    for i in xrange(len(v)):
        v[i] = i
    print "Timing:", round(clock()-t,3), "s"

n= 3*10**6
if str(sys.argv[1]) == "1":
    print "List test, n =", str(n) + ":"
    list_test()
else:
    print "Array test, n =", str(n) + ":"
    array_test()


On a old Win2K PC it gives:
C:\py>speed_test 1
List test, n = 3000000:
Timing: 2.804 s

C:\py>speed_test 2
Array test, n = 3000000:
Timing: 3.521 s


Python lists are arrays of pointers to objects, I think (a test shows
that here they use about 16 bytes for every number).
And the Python Arrays are packed: every number here uses 4 bytes.
Why do lists are faster here?

------

Memory cleaning: in the last script I've added some calls to a Win
version of the small "pslist" program, and I've put a "del v" command
after the timings. And I've seen:

C:\py>speed_test 1
List test, n = 3000000:
1) Process size: 1408 KB.
2) Process size: 48928 KB.
3) Process size: 37204 KB.

C:\py>speed_test 2
Array test, n = 3000000:
1) Process size: 1416 KB.
2) Process size: 13152 KB.
3) Process size: 1416 KB.

1 is at the start of the script before v creation, 2 is after its
inizialization loop, and 3 is after the "del v" command, like this:

used_mem(1)
from array import array
v = array("l", [0] * n)
for i in xrange(len(v)):
		v[i] = i
used_mem(2)
del v
used_mem(3)

The garbage collector removes at once the array (this is easy, it's
just a lump of memory with little extra things), but the memory used
by the list isn't free even a little time later. (I think that to
understand how/when such such garbage collector works, I have to read
the Python C sources...)

Thank you,
bearophile