speeding things up with C++

[Jorgen Grahn]

On Thu, 31 May 2007 12:25:17 -0500, Chris Mellon <arkanes at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 31 May 2007 03:45:32 -0700, bullockbefriending bard
> <kinch1967 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Thanks this is good news. I think my C/C++ background is sufficient to
>> manage to figure things out if I RTFM carefully.
>>
>> Basically I want to pass in a Python list of integer tuples, create an
>> STL container full of equivalent tuples, apply some processor-
>> intensive algorithm to said list of tuples, and finally poke the
>> results back into another Python list of integer tuples and return it
>> to the calling Python environment. Data structures are well-defind and
>> simple, and the most complex case would be 3-deep nested list, so I
>> will seriously consider figuring out how to do it manually as you
>> suggest.
>>
>
> Are you sure you want an STL container? Since the primary operator
> here is Python, the extra benefits from the STL container over plain C
> arrays isn't as evident.

STL containers are easier to use, harder to misuse and take care of
memory allocations. Wouldn't you say that's a benefit? If I wrote an
algorithm in C++, I'd rather pass it a const std::vector<double>& than
a const double * and a length.

That said, I prefer C for simple extension modules which just wrap
something. Less dependencies for the person who builds it, more people
who understand it well enough to change it.

/Jorgen

-- 
  // Jorgen Grahn <grahn@        Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu
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