I've been working on some python code to have an open source apack compression (http://www.ibsensoftware.com/products_aPACK.html is a link to the original proprietary version). Just to clarify the legality of all of this, from decompressor source written by Dwedit in arm/thumb assembly I ended up writing unapack.c and then unapack.py (http://kuwanger.malfunct.net/unapack.py). The compressor is based on studying the C/Python versions I wrote. So, I've got a working compressor (one in C and one in Python). But, my Python version is incredibly slow. And my attempts to have better compression in my C version has produced an incredibly messy/slow code, which is why I'd rather focus on making my current Python version faster.
So, here is what I have so far, "http://kuwanger.malfunct.net/apack.hash.py";. Currently it's setup under profiling and does a lot of printing out. But even without that, the search part of the algorithm is incredibly slow (~60s to compress 80K on my 1.6GHz Athlon) while adding on attempts to optimize the compress slows it down further (~90s to compress 80K on my 1.6GHz Athlon). So, I'd be curious if others could look at the source and perhaps make some suggestions, such as if I'm just going about it horribly wrong. I'd also greatly welcome someone else joining me on this project, as my efforts to optimize haven't produced results nearly as good as the official compressor. Comments are greatly welcome. Kuwanger -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
