[Python-Dev] Comparison speed

[Guido van Rossum]

> I'd still be in favour of giving strings a richcompare, since it
> allows to optimize what I think is the single most frequent case:
> Py_EQ on strings.

I have always thought that eventually (but long before Py3K!) all
objects would only support rich comparisons and the __cmp__ and
tp_compare slots would become completely obsolete.  I realize I
probably haven't expressed this thought clearly, and I'm not going to
push for this to happen quickly or forecefully, but it's nevertheless
how I see things.  I expect it would allow a tremendous cleanup of the
comparison code.  It will never reach the simplicity of cmp() -- but
think of Einstein's (?) rule "things should be as simple as they can
be, but no simpler."  Clearly cmp() was too simple. :-)

Anyway, it worries me whenever I hear someone express the thought that
adding rich comparisons to a particular object type would be a bad
idea because it would slow things down.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)