Greg, Absolutely *perfect* case for a dose of Python string concatenation performance theory or, How To Join Strings Together Fast:
http://www.skymind.com/~ocrow/python_string/ HTH, Andrew On Wed, 2004-12-08 at 17:29 -0600, Greg Lindstrom wrote: > Hello- > > I'm creating fixed-length record layouts for various record translations > I need to perform. I have been using a home-grown object, > "FixedLengthRecord" for about 4 years now and am very happy with it. > Almost. The burr under my saddle occurs when I serialize the record. > Currently, I create an empty text field and for each record in my > database (all record layouts, data types, lengths, defaults, etc. are > held in an SQL server) I concatenate the field to the text segment. I > have been led to believe this is bad form because Python will copy the > entire segment each time I add a field. Up until now, it was not a big > deal because the segments had at most 20 fields. I have just been > handed a record layout that is almost 5000 bytes long with 350 fields in > it. Gulp!! Although I could let my object churn away on this bad boy, > I'd like to know if there is a more pythonic way to serialize the record. > > One thought I had, which might lead to an addition to the language, was > to use the struct module. If I could feed the pack method a format > string then a tuple of values (instead of individual values), then I > could create the format string once, then pass it a tuple with the > values for that record. Just a thought. > > So, gurus, what are your suggestions to tame this record? Are there > easier ways that I'm just not seeing? > > Thanks, > --greg -- Andrew James <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
