[Python-Dev] Silly little benchmark

[Tim Peters]

[Skip Montanaro]
> It's that adjective "meaningful" that makes it difficult...  Obviously
> pystone wouldn't be meaningful since it doesn't do much string stuff.

pystone is always meaningful, and *especially* when "it shouldn't" change
but does anyway <0.4 wink>.  For example, while staring at strings, you may
miss that other kinds of + slow down.

> I tried timing the following:
>
>     PYTHONPATH= time ./python -tt ../Lib/test/regrtest.py -l
>
> after making sure the .py[co] files were deleted.  I got "102.96user
> 1.47system" before and "103.24user 1.57system" after.

I'm afraid this is useless except to get the sense of highly significant
changes:  several of the tests do a varying amount of work depending on
results from random.py (which initializes itself from system time when it's
first imported).

pystone is the only shared "speed benchmark" we have.