"sturlamolden" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >However, "memory mapping" a file by means of fseek() is probably more >efficient than using UNIX' mmap() or Windows' >CreateFileMapping()/MapViewOfFile().
My goodness, do I disagree with that! At least on Windows, I/O on a file mapped with MapViewOfFile uses the virtual memory pager -- the same mechanism used by the swap file. Because it is so heavily used, that is some of the most well-optimized code in the system. >We can implement a container object backed by a binary file just as >efficient (and possibly even more efficient) without using the OS' >memory mapping facilities. The major advantage is that we can >"pseudo-memory map" a lot more than a 32 bit address space can harbour. Both the Unix mmap and the Win32 MapViewOfFile allow a starting byte offset. It wouldn't be rocket science to extend Python's mmap to allow that. >There are in any case room for improving Python's mmap object. Here we agree. -- Tim Roberts, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list