I have some questions about the suitability of Python for some
applications I've developed in C/C++. These are 32 bit Console
applications, but they make extensive use of STL structures and
functions (Lists, Maps, Vectors, arrays) - primarily because the data
volume is high (2,500,000+ records).
The main thing I'd like to do is port one part of the system that has
a series of user menus and works with several text data files (one
_very_ large). I'm not using any database system, just my home-grown
indexed sequential file database. There's nothing but volume that
precludes this application from running from almost any text file-
processing language system (e.g. Perl, BASIC, etc.).
From what little I've seen of Python, it appears I could port this
application to Python code, but I'd do so only if I could:
1. Integrate it into a Web application in such a way that the user
could select it as an option from a main page and have it execute as a
WEB GUI application. Currently, the application's interface is only a
crude DOS window.
2. Assure that the performance isn't totally crippled by using Python,
an interpretted language. While I don't expect native C/C++
performance, I don't want to be embarrassed...
3. Make sure that the volume of stored data (2.5+ million records) can
be accommodated in Python structures (I don't know enough about Python
to answer this question...).
Note that I'm not considering using the existing C/C++ code in my Web
application, because I don't know how to write a C/C++ Windows
application - and I'm sure the learning curve here is greater than
Python's. I'm a very old procedural-based application developer (47+
years of programming experience), and developing Windows applications is
beyond me.
So, I only (?) want to take an existing application that uses a large
text file (and several smaller text indexing files) and put it into a
Web system I already have. I feel Python (or Perl) is(are) my best
option(s), and here I'm only looking for some initial guidance from the
Python users. TIA