[Python-Dev] mmapfile module

[Guido van Rossum]

> > The issue there is cross-platform compatibility; the Windows and Unix
> > versions take completely different constructor arguments, so how
> > should we paper over the differences?
> >
> > Unix arguments: (file descriptor, size, flags, protection)
> > Win32 arguments:(filename, tagname, size)
> >
> > We could just say, "OK, the args are completely different between
> > Win32 and Unix, despite it being the same function name".  Maybe
> > that's best, because there seems no way to reconcile those two
> > different sets of arguments.
> 
> I guess my approach would be to provide two platform-specific modules, and
> to figure out a high-level Python module which could provide a reasonable
> platform-independent interface on top of it.  One problem with that approach
> is that I think that there is also great value in having a portable mmap
> interface in the C layer, where i see lots of possible uses in extension
> modules (much like the threads API).

I don't know enough about this, but it seems that there might be two
steps: *creating* a mmap object is necessarily platform-specific; but
*using* a mmap object could be platform-neutral.

What is the API for mmap objects?

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)