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Speed: bytecode vz C API calls

Terry Reedy tjreedy at udel.edu
Tue Dec 9 12:54:12 EST 2003 
"Jacek Generowicz" <jacek.generowicz at cern.ch> wrote in message
news:tyfy8tmz7hq.fsf at pcepsft001.cern.ch...
> "Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at udel.edu> writes:
> > Can any of your callables be memoized by list rather than dict?
> > (ie, any count or restricted int args?)
>
> You've lost me there.

Lookup tables.  Dicts can memoize any function.  Lists can memoize or
partially memoize functions with one or more periodic domains.  Perhaps I am
being too obvious or simple for *you*, but I have seen people memoize fib()
or fac() with a generic dict-based wrapper, which is overkill compared to a
simple list.

In another post, you said

> If I want to compete on speed with C++, I'm
>simply going have to eliminate Python bytecode from my inner loops[*].
> [*] Unless my overall algorithm is completely wrong, of course.

For speed, you need to eliminate *executed* and *expensive* bytecodes, not
static, possibly skipped-over, bytecodes.  I'll take that as what you meant.
It is certainly what our comments are aimed at.  Hence my other suggestion
to eliminate a layer of (expensive) function calls by combining value
calculation and storage in one function (more space, less time).  More
specific suggestions will require more specific examples.

Terry J. Reedy
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