[Martin v. Lowis]
Then of course you know more than Tim would grant you: you do have an interpreter state, and hence you can infer that Python has been initialized. So I infer that your requirements are different from Tim's.
If so, I doubt they'll stay that way <wink>. I don't want Mark to *have* to know whether there's an interpreter state available, so the all-purpose prologue code will need to have a way to know that without Mark's help. I do want Mark to be *able* to use a leaner prologue dance if he happens to know that an interpreter state is available. I'd also like for that leaner prologue dance to be able to assert that an interpreter state is indeed available. "The leaner prologue dance" may be identical to the "all-purpose prologue code"; whether or not it can be is an implementation detail, which should become clear later.