mimicking a file in memory

[p.]

On Nov 20, 2:06 pm, Grant Edwards <gra... at visi.com> wrote:
> On 2007-11-20, Jarek Zgoda <jzg... at o2.usun.pl> wrote:
>
> >> Here is my dilemma: I don't want to copy the files into a
> >> local directory for mutagen's sake, only to have to remove
> >> them afterward. Instead, I'd like to load the files into
> >> memory and still be able to hand the built-in "file" function
> >> a filename to access the file in memory.
>
> >> Any ideas on how to do this?
>
> By "memory" I presume you mean virtual memory?  RAM with
> disk-blocks as backing store? On any real OS, tempfiles are
> just RAM with disk-blocks as backing store.
>
> Sound similar? The only difference is the API used to access
> the bytes.  You want a file-I/O API, so you can either use the
> extensively tested and and highly optimized filesystem code in
> the OS to make disk-backed-RAM look like a file, or you can try
> to write Python code that does the same thing.
>
> Which do you think is going to work faster/better?
>
> [The kernel is generally better at knowing what needs to be in
> RAM than you are -- let it do its job.]
>
> IOW: just use a temp file.  Life will be simple. The bytes
> probably won't ever hit the platters (if they do, then that
> means they would have the other way too).
>
> --
> Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow! It's a hole all the
>                                   at               way to downtown Burbank!
>                                visi.com

Thanks all.

Grant, are temp files automatically put into ram for all linux
distros? at any rate, i could set up ram disk. much better solution
than using python...except that i've never done a ram disk before.
more reading to do...