p. schrieb: > On Nov 20, 2:06 pm, Grant Edwards <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> On 2007-11-20, Jarek Zgoda <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> >>>> Here is my dilemma: I don't want to copy the files into a >>>> local directory for mutagen's sake, only to have to remove >>>> them afterward. Instead, I'd like to load the files into >>>> memory and still be able to hand the built-in "file" function >>>> a filename to access the file in memory. >>>> Any ideas on how to do this? >> By "memory" I presume you mean virtual memory? RAM with >> disk-blocks as backing store? On any real OS, tempfiles are >> just RAM with disk-blocks as backing store. >> >> Sound similar? The only difference is the API used to access >> the bytes. You want a file-I/O API, so you can either use the >> extensively tested and and highly optimized filesystem code in >> the OS to make disk-backed-RAM look like a file, or you can try >> to write Python code that does the same thing. >> >> Which do you think is going to work faster/better? >> >> [The kernel is generally better at knowing what needs to be in >> RAM than you are -- let it do its job.] >> >> IOW: just use a temp file. Life will be simple. The bytes >> probably won't ever hit the platters (if they do, then that >> means they would have the other way too). >> >> -- >> Grant Edwards grante Yow! It's a hole all the >> at way to downtown Burbank! >> visi.com > > Thanks all. > > Grant, are temp files automatically put into ram for all linux > distros? at any rate, i could set up ram disk. much better solution > than using python...except that i've never done a ram disk before. > more reading to do...
You misunderstood Grant. Let the OS decide what needs to be dumped to the HD or not - instead of creating a RAM-disk eating up precious ram. All modern OS, including Linux, have hard-disc-caches in RAM. Which your downloaded file ends in, whilst being stored to the HD in the background - without affecting your performance. If you then pass it to some other process that reads from the file, it will be fed from the HD-cache - fast. So - if it makes your life easier to use tempfiles because then you have an actual filename, use them and don't mind. Diez -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list