Claudio Grondi wrote: > Steven D'Aprano wrote: [...] >>>The higher level of abstraction/indirection in Python results in making >>>the concepts of 'value', 'having a value' or 'comparing values' useless, >>>where it helps in C to express the difference between address and >>>content at that address and to distinguish between the information >>>telling _what_ is stored in memory and the information about _where_ it >>>is stored. >> >> >>In Python, you never care _where_ anything is stored. The id() function >>returns the unique ID of an object, which as an implementation detail may >>be the actual memory address, but that's just an implementation detail. In >>any case, given a memory address, you can't do anything with that >>knowledge. > > > The question here is, if this a handicap or a welcome feature? > A welcome feature, absolutely no doubt about it.
> From the one side I am glad that Python cares about memory allocation > for me, but on the other side I have trouble to accept, that I have no > direct access to the memory area where data are stored in order to > manipulate them. Having this possibility would enormously speed up some > conversions, because it were possible to get them down to a redefinition > of the data structure without being forced to loop over the actual > content or use a special extension library written in C for doing that. > Well, if this isn't a case of premature optimization I've never seen one. You apparently haven't yet written a single line of your appliction, yet you are already concerned about its efficiency. 1. First, make it work. 2. Then, if it doesn;t work fast enough, make it work faster. regards Steve -- Steve Holden +44 150 684 7255 +1 800 494 3119 Holden Web LLC www.holdenweb.com PyCon TX 2006 www.python.org/pycon/ -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
