Python and Memory

[Oren Tirosh]

On Thu, Oct 02, 2003 at 04:59:15AM +0000, Ben Fairbank wrote:
> 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;

Python isn't terribly memory-efficient. Every int, for example, takes all 
the overhead of an object plus any allocator overheads. But if the bulk 
of the data is going to be numpy arrays this isn't a problem. An array 
object has a small one-time overhead and then each item takes exactly its 
native size in bytes. Make sure you use in-place operations as much as 
possible on arrays so you don't force numpy to allocate large temporary 
arrays.

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

Python can immediately use any memory expansion. It also runs on 64 bit
platforms if you ever need more than 4GB of data.

    Oren