Steve Horne <steve@ninereeds.fsnet.co.uk> writes:
At 11:20 16/09/2003 -0400, you wrote:
Steve,
First, Boost.Python questions should go to the C++-sig (http://www.boost.org/more/mailing_lists.htm#cplussig).
OK - sorry for the confusion. I understand that Boost.Python users must be a rather specific subgroup of Boost users, but I had not realised that this was the wrong place to ask Boost.Python questions.
I guess I don't need to ask why my emails keep losing their subject line as I'm in the wrong place and may as well unsubscribe.
Second, The current CVS has some excellent work on presenting C++ containers as Python containers by Joel de Guzman and Raoul Gough (see vector_indexing_suite). I really suggest you try this stuff; it could save you lots of code and will almost surely work better for you than what you've done by hand because it handles some very subtle issues of Python object lifetime and validity correctly.
Actually, while I could probably have picked up some useful tips and saved myself some time, I now have everything figured out that I need.
Also, as the containers I'm wrapping are *not* standard library containers but actually a replacement library I wrote, many of the things that would presumably get the biggest emphasis (e.g. the validity and lifetime issues) would simply be non-issues with my containers.
The main motivations in writing the C++ library were basically that the standard library containers are too fragile, lack useful functionality that cannot reasonably be retrofitted, and probably (due to the red-black trees assumption of a constant-time memory access model which is decades out of date and ignores the everyday facts of caching and virtual memory) unnecessarily slow.
Fascinating. Submitting these to Boost, perchance?
While I wanted the C++ containers to be fast and scalable, the main reason for writing them was because I wanted more flexibility, better safety, and more convenience. The fact that the 'iterators' are not invalidated when the container is updated, and keep track of the item they were left pointing to, is probably the single most important feature. The goals of flexibility, safety and convenience seem well suited to a scripting language such as Python, so it seemed sensible to give them a try in that context.
Using my containers, object lifetime and validity is already managed even in C++, so I really don't need to worry about it in Python.
I guess I'll have to trust you on that one. It's hard to see how you can accomplish your goals of optimizing speed and safety at the same time. -- Dave Abrahams Boost Consulting www.boost-consulting.com