libfib

An experiment to run Go code directly from Python.

How it works

libfib.go is a very naive implementation of Fibonacci sequence. Using Go's build modes, we build it into a shared library. The library is imported in Python and used there.

Basically, we execute the Go code from Python code even though the latter doesn't even know what Go is.

Run go help buildmodes to learn more about Go's build modes.

Why?

1. It's cool.
2. Go is much faster than Python. You can rewrite slow parts of your code in Go, and call them from your Python code. See benchmarks.
3. It's cool.

Benchmarks

Benchmarks are the best way to compare the performance and really show the coolness of Go's build modes.

The function to benchmark: Find the first 40 Fibonacci numbers. That is Fib function will be called with n from 1...40. The execution time of the full loop is then measured.

Results: libfib is 76X faster!!!1111

Pure Python implementation

benchmark.py implements the same Fibonacci function in pure Python.Here's the result of the Linux time command:

$ time python benchmark.py

real  2m26.726s
user  2m6.232s
sys 0m2.280s

Shared library implementation

benchmark_libfib.py calls the Fibonacci function in the shared library from Python. Here's the result of the Linux time command:

$ time python benchmark_libfib.py

real  0m1.899s
user  0m1.593s
sys 0m0.039s

Creating the shared objects file

go build -buildmode=c-shared -o libfib.so libfib.go

This will produce fib.h and fib.so.

Using .so in Python

Now we can load the library in Python and start using it.

import ctypes
lib = ctypes.CDLL("libfib.so")
print(lib.Fib(20))

License

MIT (c) Karan Goel