binary input and memory address passing

[Scott David Daniels]

Eric Carlson wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I can open, read, and convert data to a numeric (double) array from a 
> binary file using
> 
> nc = #something given
> nr = #something given
> f_o=open('junk.bin','rb')
> x=reshape(array('d',f_o.read()),(nr,nc))
> 
> Is there a way in python that gives better performance? These commands 
> take three to 4 times longer than loading the data into an array in (for 
> example) octave.
> 
> Also, is there a way to pass the address of a block of memory, and then 
> access the data located there (pass by reference and let the python 
> program know what data type to use)?
> 
> My situation: I have two programs that can not communicate directly, but 
> I can get memory addresses for any data in my programs. I currently save 
> to a file, then load the data from file into my other program. Clearly 
> it would be much faster if I could access the block of memory directly 
> rather than making a copy.
> 
> Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

You might look over my (admittedly old)
     http://members.dsl-only.net/~daniels/Block.html
It only has a Python 2.2 and 2.3 installer, but the sources are there
for you to compile (in which case you might toss a package back to me,
and I'll put it up).  If you look it over and have questions, let me
know.

--Scott David Daniels
scott.daniels at acm.org