dynamic allocation file buffer

[castironpi]

On Sep 9, 5:58 pm, Steven D'Aprano <st... at REMOVE-THIS-
cybersource.com.au> wrote:
> On Tue, 09 Sep 2008 14:59:19 -0700, castironpi wrote:
> > I will try my idea again.  I want to talk to people about a module I
> > want to write and I will take the time to explain it.  I think it's a
> > "cool idea" that a lot of people, forgiving the slang, could benefit
> > from.  What are its flaws?
>
> [snip long description with not-very-credible use-cases]

Steven,

> You've created a solution to a problem which (probably) only affects a
> very small number of people, at least judging by your use-cases. Who has
> a 4GB XML file, and how much crack did they smoke?

I judge from the existence of 'shelve' and 'pickle' modules, and
relational database packages, that the problem I am addressing is not
rare.  It could be the millionaire investor across the street, the
venture capitalist down the hall, or the guy with a huge CD catalog.

> Castironpi, what do *you* use this proof-of-concept module for?

Honestly, nothing yet.  I just wrote it.  My user community and
customer base are very small.  Originally, I wanted to store variable-
length strings in a file, where shelves and databases were overkill.
I created it for its beauty, sorry to disappoint.

> Don't
> bother tell us what you think *we* should use it for. Tell us what you're
> using it for, or at least what somebody else is using it for. If this is
> just a module that you think will be cool, I don't like your chances of
> people caring. There is no shortage of "cool" software that isn't useful
> for anything, and unlike eye-candy, nobody is going to use your module
> just because they like the algorithm.

Unfortunately, nobody is going to care about most of the uses I have
for it 'til I have a job.  I'm goofing around with a laptop,
remembering when my databases professor kept dropping the ball on
VARCHARs.  If you want a sound byte, think, "imagine programming
without 'new' and 'malloc'."

> If you don't have an existing application for the software, then explain
> what it does (not how) and give some idea of the performance ("it's alpha
> and written in Python and really slow, but I will re-write it in C and
> expect it to make a billion random accesses in a 10GB file per
> millisecond", or whatever). You might be lucky and have somebody say
> "Hey, that's just the tool I need to solve my problem!".

I wrote a Rope implementation just to test drive it.  It exceeded the
native immutable string type at 2 megs.  It used 'struct' instead of
'ctypes', so that number could conceivably come down.  I am intending
to leave it in pure Python, so there.

> --
> Steven

Pleasure chatting as always sir.