I read
once in IRC that one value in a Pd-array requires not 4 bytes, but 8
bytes on 64-bit systems.
Yes. Pd's graphical arrays (and Pd's data structure arrays in general)
are implemented as a linear array of "words" (t_word). A "word" can hold
one of several possible types. It is implemented as a C union, so the
overall size is always that of the largest member. In our case, the
largest member is a pointer (e.g. t_symbol *), which is 4 bytes on a
32-bit system and 8 bytes on a 64-bit systems.
This means that even if you would add a "byte" type, the overall size of
"t_word" would stay the same.
However, you can always implement your own byte array object as an
external. But as you noted, this is not necessary except you're on a
very tight memory and/or CPU budget.
Christof
On 12.01.2022 14:20, Roman Haefeli wrote:
Hi
Sometimes I stored byte data (lists of bytes) in arrays. IIRC, I read
once in IRC that one value in a Pd-array requires not 4 bytes, but 8
bytes on 64-bit systems. Since storing plain bytes seems not such an
uncommon use case for me, I wonder if it can be done more efficiently.
Not that I ever hit a memory limit, I'm just curious. With the new
(amazing!) [file] object, dealing with byte lists has become even more
appealing, so the desire to store them in memory increases.
Roman
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