[SciPy-user] Sparse matrix advice

[Anand Patil]

Hi all,

I'm looking for a 'row-ish' sparse matrix format that I can operate on
(including making new nonzero elements) quickly in C++ or Pyrex. Could
anyone recommend one?

The LIL format looks nice because it can be expanded without any
copying, but I'm worried that having to call PyList_GetItem (or
whatever it is), inc/decreffing and converting from Python to C
integers will take up a lot of time. PyTrilinos' Epetra looks pretty
cool but I'm not sure how much distributed memory stuff I'll be doing
and it would take me a long time to understand.

I'm thinking that a good solution might be Pyrex wrappers for matrices
represented as C++ vectors of rows, which are themselves vectors;
would this actually be a good solution, and is anything like this out
there already?

I'm a total sparse linear algebra neophyte, so if I'm missing some
boat entirely please help me get a clue.

Many thanks in advance,
Anand Patil