[Steven Elliott]
As you probably know each access of a builtin requires two hash table lookups. First, the builtin is not found in the list of globals. It is then found in the list of builtins.
If someone really cared about the double lookup, they could flatten a level by starting their modules with: from __builtin__ import * However, we don't see people writing this kind of code. That could mean that the double lookup hasn't been a big concern.
Why not have a means of referencing the default builtins with some sort of index the way the LOAD_FAST op code currently works?
FWIW, there was a PEP proposing a roughly similar idea, but the PEP encountered a great deal of resistance: http://www.python.org/doc/peps/pep-0329/ When it comes time to write your PEP, it would helpful to highlight how it differs from PEP 329 (i.e. implemented through the compiler rather than as a bytecode hack, etc.).
Perhaps what I'm suggesting isn't feasible for reasons that have already been discussed. But it seems like it should be possible to make "while True" as efficient as "while 1".
That is going to be difficult as long as it is legal to write: True = 0 Raymond