[New-bugs-announce] [issue4024] float(0.0) singleton

[lplatypus]

New submission from lplatypus <luke at deller.id.au>:

Here is a patch to make PyFloat_FromDouble(0.0) always return the same 
float instance.  This is similar to the existing optimization in 
PyInt_FromLong(x) for small x.

My own motivation is that the patch reduces memory by several megabytes 
for a particular in-house data processing script, but I think that it 
should be generally useful assuming that zero is a very common float 
value, and at worst almost neutral when this assumption is wrong.  The 
minimal performance impact of the test for zero should be easily 
recovered by reduced memory allocation calls.  I am happy to look into 
benchmarking if you require empirical performance data.

----------
components: Interpreter Core
files: python_zero_float.patch
keywords: patch
messages: 74224
nosy: ldeller
severity: normal
status: open
title: float(0.0) singleton
type: resource usage
versions: Python 2.6
Added file: http://bugs.python.org/file11686/python_zero_float.patch

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue4024>
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