How to create a very large array in Python

Question

For image processing, I need an array (array type, not numpy array) for 2 million 32 bit words. If I use something like:

tb = array.array( 'i', ,(0,)*2000000)

it requires 126 msec. It's large and I don't even need to initialize the array. I don't know Python internals but I assume that the statement generate tons on malloc() (memory allocator) and free() (memory deallocator).

Is there another way to create a very large Python array?

Answer 1

This is much faster, because it doesn't create a long, temporary tuple:

tb = array.array('i', (0,)) * 2000000