M.-A. Lemburg <mal@lemburg.com>:
If you are looking for speedups w/r to for-loops, applying a different indexing technique in for-loops would go a lot further and provide better performance not only to dictionary loops, but also to other sequences.
Which reminds me... There's not much I miss from C these days, but one thing I wish Python had is a more general for-loop. The C semantics that let you have any initialization, any termination test, and any iteration you like are rather cool. Yes, I realize that for (<init>; <test>; <step>) {<body>} can be simulated with: <init> while 1: if <test>: break <body> Still, having them spatially grouped the way a C for does it is nice. Makes it easier to see invariants, I think. -- <a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a> "Rightful liberty is unobstructed action, according to our will, within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others." -- Thomas Jefferson