John Machin wrote:
> Thanks, that's indeed faster than array(t, [v]*n) but what I had in
> mind was something like an additional constructor:
>
> array.filledarray(typecode, repeat_value, repeat_count)
>
> which I speculate should be even faster. Looks like I'd better get a
> copy of arraymodule.c and start fiddling.
>
> Anyone who could use this? Suggestions on name? Argument order?
>
> Functionality: same as array.array(typecode, [repeat_value]) *
> repeat_count. So it would cope with array.filledarray('c', "foo", 10)
Why not just optimize array.__mul__? The difference is clearly in the
repeated memcpy() in arraymodule.c:683. Pseudo-unrolling the loop in
python demonstrates a speed up:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ python -m timeit -s "from array import array"
"array('c',['\0'])*100000"
100 loops, best of 3: 3.14 msec per loop
[EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ python -m timeit -s "from array import array"
"array('c',['\0','\0','\0','\0'])*25000"
1000 loops, best of 3: 732 usec per loop
[EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ python -m timeit -s "from array import array"
"array('c','\0'*20)*5000"10000 loops, best of 3: 148 usec per loop
Which is quite close to your fromstring solution:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ python -m timeit -s "from array import array"
"array('c').fromstring('\0'*100000)"
10000 loops, best of 3: 137 usec per loop
In fact, you can make it about 4x faster by balancing:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ python -m timeit -s "from array import array"
"array('c','\0'*200)*500"
10000 loops, best of 3: 32.4 usec per loop
For the record:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ python -m timeit -s "from array import array"
"array('c','\0'*100000)"
10000 loops, best of 3: 140 usec per loop
-Mike
--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
