As mentioned in previous chapters, I want to show you how to interact or extend existing code using Cython. So, let's get right to doing that. Cython was originally designed to make raw Python computation faster. So, the initial proof of concept for Cython was to enable programmers to take existing Python code and use Cython's cdef keyword to require native typing to bypass the Python runtime for heavy computation. The culmination of this is increased performance in the time it takes to perform calculations and lower memory usage. It's even possible to write type-safe wrappers to existing Python libraries for fully typed Python code.
In this chapter, we will first see an example of typing Python code. Next, I will demonstrate the Cython cdef class, which allow us to wrap native C/C++ types into garbage collected Python classes. We will also see how to extend the native application Tmux with Python code by creating a pure Python command object, which is directly...
