Creating Fixed Length Records

[Andrew James]

Greg,
Absolutely *perfect* case for a dose of Python string concatenation
performance theory or, How To Join Strings Together Fast:

http://www.skymind.com/~ocrow/python_string/

HTH,
Andrew

On Wed, 2004-12-08 at 17:29 -0600, Greg Lindstrom wrote:
> Hello-
> 
> I'm creating fixed-length record layouts for various record translations 
> I need to perform.  I have been using a home-grown object, 
> "FixedLengthRecord" for about 4 years now and am very happy with it.  
> Almost.  The burr under my saddle occurs when I serialize the record.  
> Currently, I create an empty text field and for each record in my 
> database (all record layouts, data types, lengths, defaults, etc. are 
> held in an SQL server) I concatenate the field to the text segment.  I 
> have been led to believe this is bad form because Python will copy the 
> entire segment each time I add a field.  Up until now, it was not a big 
> deal because the segments had at most 20 fields.  I have just been 
> handed a record layout that is almost 5000 bytes long with 350 fields in 
> it.  Gulp!!  Although I could let my object churn away on this bad boy, 
> I'd like to know if there is a more pythonic way to serialize the record.
> 
> One thought I had, which might lead to an addition to the language, was 
> to use the struct module.  If I could feed the pack method a format 
> string then a tuple of values (instead of individual values), then I 
> could create the format string once, then pass it a tuple with the 
> values for that record.  Just a thought. 
> 
> So, gurus, what are your suggestions to tame this record?  Are there 
> easier ways that I'm just not seeing?
> 
> Thanks,
> --greg
-- 
Andrew James <drew at gremlinhosting.com>