Accessing __slots__ from C

[Carl Banks]

On Sep 10, 7:41 am, Chris <ceb... at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'd like to be able to access an attribute of a particular Python
> object as fast as possible from some C code.
>
> I wondered if using __slots__ to store the attribute would allow me to
> do this in a faster way.
>
> The reason I'd like to do this is because I need to access the
> attribute inside a loop within some C code, and I find that the
> attribute lookup using the 'PyObject_GetAttrString' call is far slower
> than any of the subsequent calculations I perform in C.
>
> Using the 'PyObject_GetAttrString' function to get the attribute, I
> find it is slightly faster when the attribute is a slot than when it
> isn't, but that the attribute lookup remains the performance-limiting
> factor.

You can determine the offset the of the slot in the object structure
by
querying the member descriptor of the type object.

descr = GetAttrString(cls,"varname");
offset = descr->d_member->offset;
slotvar = (PyObject*)(((char*)obj)+offset)

There might be some macros to simplify this.

Use at your own risk.


Carl Banks