Tuple slices

[George Sakkis]

Why does slicing a tuple returns a new tuple instead of a view of the existing one, given that
tuples are immutable ? I ended up writing a custom ImmutableSequence class that does this, but I
wonder why it is not implemented for tuples.

George

[Fredrik Lundh]

George Sakkis wrote:

Why does slicing a tuple returns a new tuple instead of a view of the existing one, given that
tuples are immutable ?

really?

a = 1, 2, 3
b = a[:]
a is b

True

</F>

[Steven Bethard]

Fredrik Lundh wrote:

George Sakkis wrote:

Why does slicing a tuple returns a new tuple instead of a view of the existing one, given that
tuples are immutable ?

really?

a = 1, 2, 3
b = a[:]
a is b

True

My impression was that full tuple copies didn't actually copy, but that
slicing a subset of a tuple might. Not exactly sure how to test this, but:

py> a = 1, 2, 3
py> a[:2] is a[:2]
False

So _something_ at least is different between the two slices...

Steve

[Pedro Werneck]

On Mon, 24 Jan 2005 18:45:46 +0100
"Fredrik Lundh" <fr*****@pythonware.com> wrote:

George Sakkis wrote:

Why does slicing a tuple returns a new tuple instead of a view of
the existing one, given that tuples are immutable ?
really?

Well... seems like this case is optimized to return the original tuple
just incrementing its reference count and returning

tupleobject.c, 330-335

if (ilow == 0 && ihigh == a->ob_size && PyTuple_CheckExact(a)) {
Py_INCREF(a);
return (PyObject *)a;
}

a = 1, 2, 3
b = a[:]
a is b

True

</F>

--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

[Pedro Werneck]

On Mon, 24 Jan 2005 18:45:46 +0100
"Fredrik Lundh" <fr*****@pythonware.com> wrote:

George Sakkis wrote:

Why does slicing a tuple returns a new tuple instead of a view of
the existing one, given that tuples are immutable ?
really?

Well... seems like this case (slicing the whole tuple) is optimized to
return the original tuple just incrementing its reference count and returning
tupleobject.c, 330-335

if (ilow == 0 && ihigh == a->ob_size && PyTuple_CheckExact(a)) {
Py_INCREF(a);
return (PyObject *)a;
}

a = 1, 2, 3
b = a[:]
a is b

True

</F>

--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

[Fredrik Lundh]

Steven Bethard wrote:

>a = 1, 2, 3
>b = a[:]
>a is b

True

My impression was that full tuple copies didn't actually copy, but that slicing a subset of a
tuple might. Not exactly sure how to test this, but:

py> a = 1, 2, 3
py> a[:2] is a[:2]
False

yup. and to figure out why things are done this way, consider this case:

a = give_me_a_huge_tuple()
len(a) (a rather large number) b = a[:2]
del a

(IIRC, I proposed to add "substrings" when I implemented the Unicode string
type, but that idea was rejected, for the very same "and how do you get rid of
the original object" reason)

</F>

[Steven Bethard]

Fredrik Lundh wrote:

Steven Bethard wrote:

My impression was that full tuple copies didn't actually copy, but that slicing a subset of a
tuple might. Not exactly sure how to test this, but:

py> a = 1, 2, 3
py> a[:2] is a[:2]
False

yup. and to figure out why things are done this way, consider this case:

>>> a = give_me_a_huge_tuple()
>>> len(a) (a rather large number) >>> b = a[:2]
>>> del a

(IIRC, I proposed to add "substrings" when I implemented the Unicode string
type, but that idea was rejected, for the very same "and how do you get rid of
the original object" reason)

Ahh. Yeah, that seems sensible. I don't think I've ever written code
like that, but if I did, I'd almost certainly want it to work as it does
now...

Steve

[Jeff Epler]

The cpython implementation stores tuples in memory like this:
[common fields for all Python objects]
[common fields for all variable-size python objects, including tuple size]
[fields specific to tuple objects, if any]
[array of PyObject*, one for each item in the tuple]
This way of storing variable-size Python objects was chosen in part
because it reuqires only one allocation for an object, not two.
However, there is no way for one tuple to point to a slice of another
tuple.

there's no reason that some other python implementation couldn't make a
different choice.

Jeff

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[George Sakkis]

"Fredrik Lundh" <fr*****@pythonware.com> wrote in message
news:ma***************************************@pyt hon.org...

Steven Bethard wrote:

>>a = 1, 2, 3
>>b = a[:]
>>a is b
True

My impression was that full tuple copies didn't actually copy, but that slicing a subset of a
tuple might. Not exactly sure how to test this, but:

py> a = 1, 2, 3
py> a[:2] is a[:2]
False

yup. and to figure out why things are done this way, consider this case:

>>> a = give_me_a_huge_tuple()
>>> len(a) (a rather large number) >>> b = a[:2]
>>> del a

(IIRC, I proposed to add "substrings" when I implemented the Unicode string
type, but that idea was rejected, for the very same "and how do you get rid of
the original object" reason)

</F>

Fair enough. So perhaps the question is whether such cases are more regular than something like:
a = give_me_a_huge_tuple()
slices = [a[i:j] for i in xrange(len(a)) for j in xrange(i+1, len(a)+1)]

George

[Peter Hansen]

George Sakkis wrote:

Fair enough. So perhaps the question is whether such cases are more regular than something like:
a = give_me_a_huge_tuple()
slices = [a[i:j] for i in xrange(len(a)) for j in xrange(i+1, len(a)+1)]

I believe the general usage of tuples tends to mean that
"give_me_a_huge_tuple()" just doesn't happen except with
those who insist on using tuples as though they were nothing
other than read-only lists.

If you use a tuple the way it was apparently intended, you
are extraordinarily unlikely to find yourself with a
huge one requiring slicing in such a way that you care
whether it is a "view" or a new object.

-Peter

[Terry Reedy]

"George Sakkis" <gs*****@rutgers.edu> wrote in message
news:35*************@individual.net...

Why does slicing a tuple returns a new tuple instead of a
view of the existing one, given that
tuples are immutable ? I ended up writing a custom
ImmutableSequence class that does this, but I
wonder why it is not implemented for tuples.

Numpy and Numarray both do this -- generate views into arrays -- because
they are specifically aimed at large datasets for which the memory savings
overrides the complications.

Aside from the problem of not being able to delete the underlying object,
the view object for a tuple would have to be a new type of object with a
new set of methods. So there would be one more thing to learn. And so
'type(o) is tuple' would generally have to be replaced by
'isinstance(type(o), (tuple,tupleview)).

For slices that are used within expressions and then discarded,
a= (1,2,3)
b = a(1:) + a(:1)
an internal tuple view might be an interesting optimization.

Terry J. Reedy

[George Sakkis]

"Peter Hansen" <pe***@engcorp.com> wrote in message news:A9********************@powergate.ca...

George Sakkis wrote:

Fair enough. So perhaps the question is whether such cases are more regular than something like:
a = give_me_a_huge_tuple()
slices = [a[i:j] for i in xrange(len(a)) for j in xrange(i+1, len(a)+1)]

I believe the general usage of tuples tends to mean that
"give_me_a_huge_tuple()" just doesn't happen except with
those who insist on using tuples as though they were nothing
other than read-only lists.

If you use a tuple the way it was apparently intended, you
are extraordinarily unlikely to find yourself with a
huge one requiring slicing in such a way that you care
whether it is a "view" or a new object.

-Peter

Actually my initial motivation was not a huge tuple I had to slice many times. It was something much
less extraordinarily unlikely, a recursive function with a sequence parameter:

def foo(sequence):
# base_case
# do_stuff()
combine(foo(sequence[:n]),
foo(sequence[n:]))

Having each slice be a view of the original sequence instead of a fresh copy would be a Good Thing
(tm).

George

[George Sakkis]

"Terry Reedy" <tj*****@udel.edu> wrote in message
news:ma***************************************@pyt hon.org...

Aside from the problem of not being able to delete the underlying object,
the view object for a tuple would have to be a new type of object with a
new set of methods.

It *could*, but it doesn't have to. One can represent a view as essentially an object with a pointer
to a memory buffer and a (start,stop,step) triple. Then a "real tuple" is just a "view" with the
triple being (0, len(sequence), 1).

George

[Jeff Shannon]

[My newsreader crapped out on sending this; apologies if it appears
twice.]

George Sakkis wrote:

"Terry Reedy" <tj*****@udel.edu> wrote in message
news:ma***************************************@pyt hon.org...

Aside from the problem of not being able to delete the underlying object,
the view object for a tuple would have to be a new type of object with a
new set of methods.

It *could*, but it doesn't have to. One can represent a view as essentially an object with a pointer
to a memory buffer and a (start,stop,step) triple. Then a "real tuple" is just a "view" with the
triple being (0, len(sequence), 1).

Except that that's not how Python tuples *are* constructed, and it'd
be a pretty big deal to redo the architecture of all tuples to support
this relatively special case.

Even if this re-architecting were done, you're still constructing a
new object -- the difference is that you're creating this
(start,stop,step) triple instead of duplicating a set of PyObject*
pointers, and then doing math based on those values instead of
straightforward pointer access. I'm not at all convinced that this
really saves you a significant amount for tuple slices (really, you're
still constructing a new tuple anyhow, aren't you?), and it's going to
cost a bit in both execution time and complexity in the common case
(accessing tuples without slicing). If there's a big cost in object
construction, it's probably going to be the memory allocation, and for
a reasonable tuple the size of the memory required is not going to
significantly affect the allocation time.

Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International

[George Sakkis]

"Jeff Shannon" <je**@ccvcorp.com> wrote in message news:10************@corp.supernews.com...

[My newsreader crapped out on sending this; apologies if it appears
twice.]

George Sakkis wrote:

"Terry Reedy" <tj*****@udel.edu> wrote in message
news:ma***************************************@pyt hon.org...

Aside from the problem of not being able to delete the underlying object,
the view object for a tuple would have to be a new type of object with a
new set of methods.

It *could*, but it doesn't have to. One can represent a view as essentially an object with a pointer to a memory buffer and a (start,stop,step) triple. Then a "real tuple" is just a "view" with the
triple being (0, len(sequence), 1).

Except that that's not how Python tuples *are* constructed, and it'd
be a pretty big deal to redo the architecture of all tuples to support
this relatively special case.

Even if this re-architecting were done, you're still constructing a
new object -- the difference is that you're creating this
(start,stop,step) triple instead of duplicating a set of PyObject*
pointers, and then doing math based on those values instead of
straightforward pointer access. I'm not at all convinced that this
really saves you a significant amount for tuple slices (really, you're
still constructing a new tuple anyhow, aren't you?), and it's going to
cost a bit in both execution time and complexity in the common case
(accessing tuples without slicing). If there's a big cost in object
construction, it's probably going to be the memory allocation, and for
a reasonable tuple the size of the memory required is not going to
significantly affect the allocation time.

Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International

You're probably right about the allocation time, but my main concern is the memory required for each
slice, which can be O(n) wrt the length of the whole tuple. I would like this to be constant (at
least if there was a way around to the problem of deleting the underlying sequence).

George

[Terry Reedy]

"George Sakkis" <gs*****@rutgers.edu> wrote in message
news:35*************@individual.net...

Actually my initial motivation was not a huge tuple I had to slice many
times. It was something much
less extraordinarily unlikely, a recursive function with a sequence
parameter:

def foo(sequence):
# base_case
# do_stuff()
combine(foo(sequence[:n]),
foo(sequence[n:]))

Having each slice be a view of the original sequence instead of a fresh
copy would be a Good Thing

Why? To save time? memory? Either would require more that a few bytes per
slice. If they are, you can probably use virtual slices as follows.

def foo(sequence):
def _foo(seq, start, stop)
# base_case
# do_stuff()
combine(_foo(seq, start, n), _foo(seq, n, stop))
_foo(sequence, 0, len(sequence)

In other words, if you don't really want slices copied out of the sequence,
then don't slice! Just use 2 ints to indicate the working region or view.
Both this and using a nested function with additional params are standard
techniques. This also works when the seq is mutable and you want changes
to the 'slice' to change the original, as in quicksort.

Terry J. Reedy

[Nick Coghlan]

George Sakkis wrote:

You're probably right about the allocation time, but my main concern is the memory required for each
slice, which can be O(n) wrt the length of the whole tuple. I would like this to be constant (at
least if there was a way around to the problem of deleting the underlying sequence).

If you really want a view into a tuple (or any sequence for that matter):

from itertools import islice
islice(iter(seq), start, end, step)

Then use the various functions in itertools to work with the resulting iterator
(since the syntactic support for working with iterators is currently quite
limited - slicing, concatenation and repetition are spelt with
itertools.islice(), itertools.chain() and itertools.repeat(), rather than with
their standard syntactic equivalents "[x:y:z]", "+" and "*").

The above approach does suffer from the problem of holding a reference to the
original sequence, though.

Cheers,
Nick.

--
Nick Coghlan | nc******@email.com | Brisbane, Australia
---------------------------------------------------------------
http://boredomandlaziness.skystorm.net

[gsakkis]

Terry Reedy wrote:

"George Sakkis" <gs*****@rutgers.edu> wrote in message
news:35*************@individual.net...

Actually my initial motivation was not a huge tuple I had to slice many times. It was something much
less extraordinarily unlikely, a recursive function with a sequence parameter:

def foo(sequence):
# base_case
# do_stuff()
combine(foo(sequence[:n]),
foo(sequence[n:]))

Having each slice be a view of the original sequence instead of a fresh copy would be a Good Thing
Why? To save time? memory? Either would require more that a few

bytes per slice. If they are, you can probably use virtual slices as follows.

def foo(sequence):
def _foo(seq, start, stop)
# base_case
# do_stuff()
combine(_foo(seq, start, n), _foo(seq, n, stop))
_foo(sequence, 0, len(sequence)

In other words, if you don't really want slices copied out of the sequence, then don't slice! Just use 2 ints to indicate the working region or view. Both this and using a nested function with additional params are standard techniques. This also works when the seq is mutable and you want changes to the 'slice' to change the original, as in quicksort.

Terry J. Reedy

I would say these are standard *C/C++* techniques; slicing simplifies
things and thus seems more 'pythonic' to me.

George

[George Sakkis]

An iterator is perfectly ok if all you want is to iterate over the
elements of a view, but as you noted, iterators are less flexible than
the underlying sequence. The view should be (or at least appear)
identical in functionality (i.e. public methods) with its underlying
sequence.

George

[Terry Reedy]

<gs*****@rutgers.edu> wrote in message
news:11*********************@z14g2000cwz.googlegro ups.com...

Terry Reedy wrote:

In other words, if you don't really want slices copied out of the
sequence,
then don't slice! Just use 2 ints to indicate the working region or
view.
Both this and using a nested function with additional params are
standard
techniques. This also works when the seq is mutable and you want
changes
to the 'slice' to change the original, as in quicksort.

I would say these are standard *C/C++* techniques; slicing simplifies
things and thus seems more 'pythonic' to me.

Unless you are GvR or Tim Peters, throwing 'pythonic' at me doesn't cut it
with me, especially when you use it so shallowly. The current Pythonic
meaning of 'slice', as defined by GvR and implemented in core Python
sequence objects and documented in the reference manuals and reiterated by
GvR on PyDev in just the last day, is to make an independent in-memory
#copy# of the indicated part of a sequence. Both aspects are intentional
and desired features, not accidents.

Yes, slicing, even in the Pythonic sense, may well simplify the OP's
algorithm (of which he gave almost no detail), but the whole point of this
thread is that he does not want to do that (make copy slices). While he
might shortsightedly think that he wants Guido to redefine slice and
replace the current implementation of tuple with a more spacious, possibly
slower one that would allow that definition, that will not solve his
current problem, if indeed he has one.

As George Sakkis the OP noted, the essential data constituting a contiguous
section view are the underlying sequence and two position markers. Whether
one works with these directly or packages them into a tuple or user class
instance is a matter of relative conveniences. As it turns out, I was
thinking about the design choices involved in a generic sequence view class
just the morning before reading the original post. But I have no idea
whether GS's foo function would justify the added overhead of such a thing.
It partly depends on what he wishes to optimize, which I asked about, but
have not yet seen an answer about. So I suggested the simplest approach
that would work. And that, to me, *is* pythonic!

Terry J. Reedy

[Jeff Shannon]

George Sakkis wrote:

An iterator is perfectly ok if all you want is to iterate over the
elements of a view, but as you noted, iterators are less flexible than
the underlying sequence. The view should be (or at least appear)
identical in functionality (i.e. public methods) with its underlying
sequence.

So, what problem is it, exactly, that you think you'd solve by making
tuple slices a view rather than a copy?

As I see it, you get the *possibility* of saving a few bytes (which
may go in the other direction) at a cost of complexity and speed. You
have greater dependence of internal objects on each other, you can't
get rid of the original tuple while any slice views of it exist, you
gain nothing in the way of syntax/usage simplicity... so what's the
point?

To my mind, one of the best things about Python is that (for the most
part) I don't have to worry about actual memory layout of objects. I
don't *care* how tuples are implemented, they just work. It seems to
me that you're saying that they work perfectly fine as-is, but that
you have a problem with the implementation that the language tries its
best to let you not care about. Is this purely abstract philosophy?

Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International

[George Sakkis]

"Terry Reedy" <tj*****@udel.edu> wrote in message news:mailman.1308.1106688018.22381.python-

Unless you are GvR or Tim Peters,
Actually I am the OP. I posted my previous mail from Google groups, which for some reason put my
email instead of my name; it should be ok now.
throwing 'pythonic' at me doesn't cut it
with me, especially when you use it so shallowly. The current Pythonic
meaning of 'slice', as defined by GvR and implemented in core Python
sequence objects and documented in the reference manuals and reiterated by
GvR on PyDev in just the last day, is to make an independent in-memory
#copy# of the indicated part of a sequence. Both aspects are intentional
and desired features, not accidents.
Thanks for the info; a citation that supports your claim that the in-memory copy is part of the
*specification* of a tuple slice -- and not a choice that is subject to the implementation -- would
be useful. Note that I'm talking only about slices of *tuples* (or any immutable sequence for that
matter) here, not all slices. As for the "pythonic", I mentioned it as a loosely speaking synonym to
"simpler" or "more intuitive"; I apologize if this term has religious connotations in cl.py.
Yes, slicing, even in the Pythonic sense, may well simplify the OP's
algorithm (of which he gave almost no detail), but the whole point of this
thread is that he does not want to do that (make copy slices). While he
might shortsightedly think that he wants Guido to redefine slice and
replace the current implementation of tuple with a more spacious, possibly
slower one that would allow that definition, that will not solve his
current problem, if indeed he has one.
I fail to understand where does your strongly negative tone come from; certainly not from my posts.
I asked a simple question and I was expecting a simple answer, not defending myself from a
hypothetical shortsighted suggestion to Guido. Thankfully I got one (and only so far) good reason
for the current implementation from Fredrik Lundh, namely the reference to the original object.
As George Sakkis the OP noted, the essential data constituting a contiguous
section view are the underlying sequence and two position markers. Whether
one works with these directly or packages them into a tuple or user class
instance is a matter of relative conveniences. As it turns out, I was
Honestly, I can't imagine a case where supplying these three associated data packaged is *less*
convenient than spelling them out explicitly.
thinking about the design choices involved in a generic sequence view class
just the morning before reading the original post. But I have no idea
whether GS's foo function would justify the added overhead of such a thing.
This is not the point; that function was just the motivation for questioning the current tuple slice
implementation. I wouldn't start this thread in the first place if I didn't have the impression that
tuple views would be beneficial for many (most?) cases.
It partly depends on what he wishes to optimize, which I asked about, but
have not yet seen an answer about.
Are you sure you read the whole thread ? I replied explicitly on this to Jeff Shannon:

"You're probably right about the allocation time, but my main concern is the memory required for
each slice, which can be O(n) wrt the length of the whole tuple. I would like this to be constant
(at least if there was a way around to the problem of deleting the underlying sequence)."
So I suggested the simplest approach that would work. And that, to me, *is* pythonic!
Simplest to whom ? The user or the py-dev guy that implements tuples ? It sounds as if you have the
second in mind.
Terry J. Reedy

George

[George Sakkis]

"Jeff Shannon" <je**@ccvcorp.com> wrote in message news:10*************@corp.supernews.com...

George Sakkis wrote:

An iterator is perfectly ok if all you want is to iterate over the
elements of a view, but as you noted, iterators are less flexible than
the underlying sequence. The view should be (or at least appear)
identical in functionality (i.e. public methods) with its underlying
sequence.
So, what problem is it, exactly, that you think you'd solve by making
tuple slices a view rather than a copy?

As I see it, you get the *possibility* of saving a few bytes (which

It all comes down on what you mean by "a few bytes". Since many (most?) slices are linear wrt to the
original sequence's length, it is not hard to think of algorithms that involve the creation of
*many* slices (e.g. most recursive divide-and-conquer algorithms). Implementing these using slices
simply does not scale as the input sequence gets larger. Of course, you can always use the standard
C/C++ approach and pass the original sequence along with the (start,stop,step) indices of the slice,
as Terry Reedy mentioned, but then you lose in expressiveness.
may go in the other direction) at a cost of complexity and speed. You
have greater dependence of internal objects on each other, you can't
get rid of the original tuple while any slice views of it exist, you
gain nothing in the way of syntax/usage simplicity... so what's the
point?

To my mind, one of the best things about Python is that (for the most
part) I don't have to worry about actual memory layout of objects. I
don't *care* how tuples are implemented, they just work. It seems to
me that you're saying that they work perfectly fine as-is, but that
you have a problem with the implementation that the language tries its
best to let you not care about. Is this purely abstract philosophy?
No, it's called "scalability", and it's not purely abstract philosophy AFAIK. I fully agree that for
the most part you don't have to care about it, and I'm grateful that python does all its magic
trasparently. However if you do care about it, and at the same time you are unwilling to sacrifice
the elegance of slices, the current implementation is not ideal.
Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International

George

[jfj]

Jeff Shannon wrote:

So, what problem is it, exactly, that you think you'd solve by making
tuple slices a view rather than a copy?

I think views are good for
1) saving memory
2) saving time (as you don't have to copy the elements into the new tuple)

And they are worth it. However, (as in other cases with slicing), it is
very easy and fast to create a view for a slice with the default step
'1', while it's a PITA and totally not worth it to create a view for a
slice with non default step. I think it would be good to:

if slice_step == 1
create_view
else
create_new_tuple

Actually, i think that slices with step, is a bad feature in general
and i think I will write a PEP to suggest their removal in python3k.
Gerald

[Bengt Richter]

On Tue, 25 Jan 2005 19:25:55 -0500, "George Sakkis" <gs*****@rutgers.edu> wrote:

"Jeff Shannon" <je**@ccvcorp.com> wrote in message news:10*************@corp.supernews.com...

George Sakkis wrote:

> An iterator is perfectly ok if all you want is to iterate over the
> elements of a view, but as you noted, iterators are less flexible than
> the underlying sequence. The view should be (or at least appear)
> identical in functionality (i.e. public methods) with its underlying
> sequence.

So, what problem is it, exactly, that you think you'd solve by making
tuple slices a view rather than a copy?

As I see it, you get the *possibility* of saving a few bytes (which

It all comes down on what you mean by "a few bytes". Since many (most?) slices are linear wrt to the
original sequence's length, it is not hard to think of algorithms that involve the creation of
*many* slices (e.g. most recursive divide-and-conquer algorithms). Implementing these using slices
simply does not scale as the input sequence gets larger. Of course, you can always use the standard
C/C++ approach and pass the original sequence along with the (start,stop,step) indices of the slice,
as Terry Reedy mentioned, but then you lose in expressiveness.

I didn't see the leadup to this, but what is the problem with just subclassing tuple to
give you the views you want?
Regards,
Bengt Richter

[Bengt Richter]

On Wed, 26 Jan 2005 11:55:59 -0800, jfj <jf*@freemail.gr> wrote:

Jeff Shannon wrote:

So, what problem is it, exactly, that you think you'd solve by making
tuple slices a view rather than a copy?

I think views are good for
1) saving memory
2) saving time (as you don't have to copy the elements into the new tuple)

And they are worth it. However, (as in other cases with slicing), it is
very easy and fast to create a view for a slice with the default step
'1', while it's a PITA and totally not worth it to create a view for a
slice with non default step. I think it would be good to:

if slice_step == 1
create_view
else
create_new_tuple

Actually, i think that slices with step, is a bad feature in general
and i think I will write a PEP to suggest their removal in python3k.

What's the big deal with other than 1 steps? It is just adjusting a few numbers
so that you can either index the new virtual slice with an integer and return the
element, in which case the index into the original tuple will be
someoffset+i*somefactor once you get past the limit checks for the virtual
slice. By the same token, transforming a few numbers of one virtual slice
into similar numbers for a a new virtual slice of that shouldn't be rocket science.
And it wouldn't have to be done more than once. Don't have time to do it now,
but there are plenty around here that could, I'm sure.

Regards,
Bengt Richter

[Nick Coghlan]

jfj wrote:

Jeff Shannon wrote:

So, what problem is it, exactly, that you think you'd solve by making
tuple slices a view rather than a copy?

I think views are good for
1) saving memory
2) saving time (as you don't have to copy the elements into the new tuple)

1. Applies only if you are making large slices, or a lot of slices with each
containing at least 3 elements.
A view can also *cost* memory, when it looks at a small piece of a large
item. The view will keep the entire item alive, even though it needs only a
small piece.

2. Hell no. The *elements* aren't copied, pointers to the elements are. If you
*don't* copy the pointers, then every item access through the view involves an
indirection as the index into the original sequence gets calculated.

So views *may* save memory in some applications, but are unlikely to save time
in any application (except any saving resulting from the memory saving).

Cheers,
Nick.

--
Nick Coghlan | nc******@email.com | Brisbane, Australia
---------------------------------------------------------------
http://boredomandlaziness.skystorm.net

[Nick Coghlan]

jfj wrote:

Actually, i think that slices with step, is a bad feature in general
and i think I will write a PEP to suggest their removal in python3k.

I wouldn't bother. Extended slicing was added to support those doing serious
numerical work in Python, and it won't get removed for all the reasons it was
added in the first place.

Cheers,
Nick.

--
Nick Coghlan | nc******@email.com | Brisbane, Australia
---------------------------------------------------------------
http://boredomandlaziness.skystorm.net

[George Sakkis]

"Bengt Richter" <bo**@oz.net> wrote in message news:41*****************@news.oz.net...

On Wed, 26 Jan 2005 11:55:59 -0800, jfj <jf*@freemail.gr> wrote:

Jeff Shannon wrote:

So, what problem is it, exactly, that you think you'd solve by making
tuple slices a view rather than a copy?

I think views are good for
1) saving memory
2) saving time (as you don't have to copy the elements into the new tuple)

And they are worth it. However, (as in other cases with slicing), it is
very easy and fast to create a view for a slice with the default step
'1', while it's a PITA and totally not worth it to create a view for a
slice with non default step. I think it would be good to:

if slice_step == 1
create_view
else
create_new_tuple

Actually, i think that slices with step, is a bad feature in general
and i think I will write a PEP to suggest their removal in python3k.

What's the big deal with other than 1 steps? It is just adjusting a few numbers
so that you can either index the new virtual slice with an integer and return the
element, in which case the index into the original tuple will be
someoffset+i*somefactor once you get past the limit checks for the virtual
slice. By the same token, transforming a few numbers of one virtual slice
into similar numbers for a a new virtual slice of that shouldn't be rocket science.
And it wouldn't have to be done more than once. Don't have time to do it now,
but there are plenty around here that could, I'm sure.

Regards,
Bengt Richter

Here's my (undocumented) version of it: http://rafb.net/paste/results/HkxmHp37.html
and its unit test: http://rafb.net/paste/results/2LIInT68.html

And some useless timing comparisons (I know it's a stupid example, don't flame me for this):

$ python /usr/lib/python2.3/timeit.py \
-s "x=tuple(xrange(10000))" \
"[x[1:-1] for n in xrange(100)]"
10 loops, best of 3: 3.84e+04 usec per loop

$ python /usr/lib/python2.3/timeit.py \
-s "from immutableseq import ImmutableSequence" \
-s "x=ImmutableSequence(xrange(10000))" \
"[x[1:-1] for n in xrange(100)]"
100 loops, best of 3: 5.85e+03 usec per loop

Feel free to comment or suggest improvements.

George

[jfj]

Nick Coghlan wrote:

1. Applies only if you are making large slices, or a lot of slices with
each containing at least 3 elements.
A view can also *cost* memory, when it looks at a small piece of a
large item. The view will keep the entire item alive, even though it
needs only a small piece.
That is correct.

2. Hell no. The *elements* aren't copied, pointers to the elements are.
If you *don't* copy the pointers, then every item access through the
view involves an indirection as the index into the original sequence
gets calculated.
If you have

x=(1,2,...100001)
y=x[:-1]

then you copy 100000 pointers AND you INCREF them AND you DECREF them
when y dies.

The unfortunate case by (1) would be:

x=(1,2,...100001)
x=x[:1]

So views *may* save memory in some applications, but are unlikely to
save time in any application (except any saving resulting from the
memory saving).

They do. If tp_dealloc of a tuple view doesn't decref the pointers.

We should look for what is the most common case.
Gerald

-PS: the PEP for the removal ought to have a ":)" at the end.