Installing Cython

The Cython programming language acts as glue between Python and C/C++. With the Cython tools, we can compile plain Python code, which is closer to the machine level. The following command will install Cython:

$ pip install cython

The cytoolz package contains utilities created by Cythonizing the handy Python toolz package. Install cytoolz as follows:

$ pip install cytoolz
$ pip freeze|grep cytoolz
cytoolz==0.7.0

Just as in cooking shows, we will show the results of Cythonizing before going through the process involved (deferred to the next section). The timeit Python module measures time. We will use this module to measure different functions. Define the following function, which accepts as arguments a short code snippet, a function call, and the number of times the code will run:

def time(code, n):
    times = min(timeit.Timer(code, setup=setup).repeat(3, n))

    return round(1000* np.array(times)/n, 3)

We predefine a large setup string containing all the code. The code is...