On 2006/10/20, Larry Hastings wrote:
I'm ready to post the patch.
Sheesh! Where does the time go.
I've finally found the time to re-validate and post the patch. It's SF.net patch #1590352:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1590352&gro... I've attached both the patch itself (against the current 2.6 revision, 52618) and a lengthy treatise on the patch and its ramifications as I understand them.
I've also added one more experimental change: a new string method, str.simplify(). All it does is force a lazy concatenation / lazy slice to render. (If the string isn't a lazy string, or it's already been rendered, str.simplify() is a no-op.) The idea is, if you know these consarned "lazy slices" are giving you the oft-cited horrible memory usage scenario, you can tune your app by forcing the slices to render and drop their references. 99% of the time you don't care, and you enjoy the minor speedup. The other 1% of the time, you call .simplify() and your code behaves as it did under 2.5. Is this the right approach? I dunno. So far I like it better than the alternatives. But I'm open to suggestions, on this or any other aspect of the patch.
Cheers,
/larry/