Python and Memory

[Michael Hudson]

baf at texas.antispam.net (Ben Fairbank) writes:

> I have to pick a language to commit to for general purpose
> scientific/statistical/utility/database programming at my office and
> have pretty much narrowed it down to R or Python.  Problem:  none of
> the various Python books I have looked into  has had much to say about
> memory.  I will be operating on some big arrays, probably with Numpy;

Hmm.  Python is not *amazingly* memory efficient.  But if you're
dealing with relatively few Numpy arrays, the memory consumption will
probably not be that much more than any other language you use
(unlike, say, using a list of floats).

> if I run out of space and upgrade a Win 2000 or Win XP pro machine
> from 256 Meg to 500Meg or even 1G will Python automatically recognize
> and take advantage of the increase? 

This is more a question about the OS than Python.  I would be amazed
if Python couldn't use the extra memory.

> Where are questionss such as this discussed in the documentation?

I don't think they are, really.  The numpy manual might have a few
words to say on the subject.

Cheers,
mwh

-- 
  Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.
                                                    -- Simeon Strunsky