[Python-3000] Lazy strings (was Re: Py3k release schedule worries)

[Josiah Carlson]

"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote:
> On 12/30/06, Talin <talin at acm.org> wrote:
> > Maybe this would be a good time to review, or at least restate, the
> > specific plans for strings in Py3K? I know that there's been a great
> > deal of discussion on this, but a lot of that discussion took place
> > *before* Larry's work (specifically, before a number of people in this
> > group drank the lazy-strings KoolAid.)
> 
> The *only* think that I care about is that we end up with a single
> string type named 'str' that has the same semantics (and some of the
> same performance) as the current Unicode strings. (I mention
> performance because s[i] should remain an O(1) operation.)

Could I get some clarification on this point?

Were you referring to the structure I had offered that would allow the
proper handling of surrogate pairs in the case of s[i], which would
result in access time being a function of the number of surrogates in
the string (in the worst case O(log num_surrogates) )?

Was this in reference to delayed construction time overhead as in the
case of lazy strings?

Both?  Neither?  Something else that I've forgotten?


 - Josiah