Struct class random access

[castironpi]

On Aug 25, 4:49 pm, castironpi <castiro... at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Aug 25, 4:25 pm, Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch <bj_... at gmx.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Mon, 25 Aug 2008 13:03:09 -0700, castironpi wrote:
> > > struct.Struct lets you encode Python objects into structured memory. It
> > > accepts a format string, and optionally a buffer and offset to/from
> > > which to read/write the structure.  What do you think of random access
> > > for the results?
>
> > > (unproduced)
> > >>>> packer= struct.Struct( 'IIIf255p' )
> > >>>> packer.pack_into( buf, off, 10, 20, 30, 0.5, 'abc' )
> > >>>> packer.unpack_from( buf, off, 2 ) #reads field 2
> > > 30
>
> > I don't like it for the same reason I don't like index access on tuples
> > or lists that represent a "record" -- the numbers are quite meaningless.  
> > Names for the components result in much easier to understand source code,
> > so I would prefer to use `ctypes` or `construct` to create such a record.
>
> > Ciao,
> >         Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch
>
> I'm interested in the speed benefit, so you don't have to reconstruct
> the entire 'record' just to read/write one 'field'.  How in ctypes?

Model the constructor after 'namedtuple' type.

(unproduced)
>>> packer= struct.Struct( 'IIIf255p', 'i1', 'i2', 'i3', 'afloat', 'name' )
>>> packer.pack_into( buf, off, 10, 20, 30, 0.5, 'abc' )
>>> packer.unpack_from( buf, off, 'i3' )
30
>>> packer.unpack_from( buf, off )
( 10, 20, 30, 0.5, 'abc' )

You still get marginal speed benefit in sequential access.  You avoid
the construction of n-1 objects.