Hello-
I'm creating fixed-length record layouts for various record translations I need to perform. I have been using a home-grown object, "FixedLengthRecord" for about 4 years now and am very happy with it. Almost. The burr under my saddle occurs when I serialize the record. Currently, I create an empty text field and for each record in my database (all record layouts, data types, lengths, defaults, etc. are held in an SQL server) I concatenate the field to the text segment. I have been led to believe this is bad form because Python will copy the entire segment each time I add a field. Up until now, it was not a big deal because the segments had at most 20 fields. I have just been handed a record layout that is almost 5000 bytes long with 350 fields in it. Gulp!! Although I could let my object churn away on this bad boy, I'd like to know if there is a more pythonic way to serialize the record.
One thought I had, which might lead to an addition to the language, was to use the struct module. If I could feed the pack method a format string then a tuple of values (instead of individual values), then I could create the format string once, then pass it a tuple with the values for that record. Just a thought.
So, gurus, what are your suggestions to tame this record? Are there easier ways that I'm just not seeing?
Thanks, --greg -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
