Hi Brad
Not that I'm an expert but note:
1. If you already know C, fair enough. You should know what you are getting into then. I sure as heck don't know it very well at all and I'm not gonna make that time investment now. MAYBE if I really really needed the extra speed (but this seems to arise more infrequently than one would imagine) for something where I couldn't interface with some existing binary library.
2. The PythonForDelphi crowd makes the creation of native binary extensions with Delphi pathetically easy (which is about equivalent to the degree of complexity I can handle). As I said in a previous post, C is not the only game in town for binary extensions. Of course, I happen to already know ObjectPascal (Delphi) quite well, so for me it is a good fit - maybe not so much for you if pascal would be new for you. If both pascal AND C are new for you, I suspect you will find Delphi a fair bit easier (& faster) to learn. btw, Works with Kylix also. I don't know about FPC.
3. As someone said previously, some of the 'builtin' python functionality is compiled C anyway. This point alone often makes it very difficult to qualify statements like 'python is slow'. You could even start with the Cpython source for something like file access and see how you go with optimization, if *that* performance was not enough for you.
4. Nobody mentioned Pyrex yet, I think it kinda allows you to write C within your python scripts, and then handles that all intellligently, compiles the necessary bits, and so on - try a google search for the facts rather than my broken memory of features.
5. If all you are is curious about interfacing a C extension with Python - that's cool too. I would be interested in hearing what to look out for in the learning stage of developing C-extensions, for when I am overcome by curiosity and feel the need to try it out.
Keep well Caleb
I just want to know the basics of using C and Python together when the need arises, that's all, I don't want to write a book about what exactly it is that I'm involved in.
I'm going to take It's Me's advice and have a look at SWIG.
Thank you,
Brad
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