[Python-Dev] The "lazy strings" patch

[Jean-Paul Calderone]

On Mon, 23 Oct 2006 09:07:51 -0700, Josiah Carlson <jcarlson at uci.edu> wrote:
>
>"Paul Moore" <p.f.moore at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I had picked up on this comment, and I have to say that I had been a
>> little surprised by the resistance to the change based on the "code
>> would break" argument, when you had made such a thorough attempt to
>> address this. Perhaps others had missed this point, though.
>
>I'm also concerned about future usability.

Me too (perhaps in a different way though).

>Word in the Py3k list is
>that Python 2.6 will be just about the last Python in the 2.x series,
>and by directing his implementation at only Python 2.x strings, he's
>just about guaranteeing obsolescence.

People will be using 2.x for a long time to come.  And in the long run,
isn't all software obsolete? :)

>By building with unicode and/or
>objects with a buffer interface in mind, Larry could build with both 2.x
>and 3.x in mind, and his code wouldn't be obsolete the moment it was
>released.

(I'm not sure what the antecedent of "it" is in the above, I'm going to
assume it's Python 3.x.)

Supporting unicode strings and objects providing the buffer interface seems
like a good idea in general, even disregarding Py3k.  Starting with str is
reasonable though, since there's still plenty of code that will benefit from
this change, if it is indeed a beneficial change.

Larry, I'm going to try to do some benchmarks against Twisted using this
patch, but given my current time constraints, you may be able to beat me
to this :)  If you're interested, Twisted trunk at HEAD plus this trial plugin:

  http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/browser/sandbox/exarkun/merit/trunk

will let you do some gross measurements using the Twisted test suite.  I can
give some more specific pointers if this sounds like something you'd want to
mess with.

Jean-Paul