Porting the 2-3 heap data-structure library from C to Python

[Stefan Behnel]

Alec Taylor, 07.03.2012 15:25:
> I am planning to port the 2-3 heap data-structure as described by
> Professor Tadao Takaoka in Theory of 2-3 Heaps published in 1999 and
> available in PDF:
> http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/tad.takaoka/2-3heaps.pdf
> 
> The source-code used has been made available:
> http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/research/RG/alg/ttheap.h
> http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/research/RG/alg/ttheap.c
> 
> I plan on wrapping it in a class.
> 
> This tutorial I used to just test out calling C within Python
> (http://richizo.wordpress.com/2009/01/25/calling-c-functions-inside-python/)
> and it seems to work, but this might not be the recommended method.
> 
> Any best practices for how best to wrap the 2-3 heap data-structure
> from C to Python?

For data structures, where performance tends to matter, it's usually best
to start with Cython right away, instead of using ctypes.

http://cython.org/

Here's a tutorial for wrapping a C library with it:

http://docs.cython.org/src/tutorial/clibraries.html

Stefan