[Cython] Storing many, many instances

[Stefan Behnel]

Dag Sverre Seljebotn wrote:
>> Stéfan van der Walt wrote:
>>> I think I may have to switch to structs instead of classes, but then I
>>> no longer have convenient methods or array members.  Maybe I should
>>> rewrite my class to have many static methods that operate on a struct,
>>> and then collect the structs as data instead of the full instances.
>> Technically it would not be too difficult to allow
>>
>> cdef struct MyStruct:
>>     void foo(self):
>>         # self is pure MyStruct, perhaps stack-allocated
>>
>> in Cython, and transform
>>
>> mystructinstance.foo()
>>
>> into
>>
>> __mangled_MyStruct_foo(mystructinstance)
> 
> Sorry, it should be MyStruct* as self, and one would transform a call into
> 
> __mangled_MyStruct_foo(&mystructinstance)

I wouldn't mind. We have a lot of convenience stuff in structs already
(e.g. dict coercion and keyword arguments), so adding methods with the
above semantics wouldn't hurt.

It's not rewriting C++ either, as long as it makes sense in Cython as a
language.

Stefan