[Python-Dev] speeding up list append calls

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Neal Norwitz wrote:
> This code doesn't really work in general.  It assumes that any append
> function call is a list method, which is obviously invalid.  But if a
> variable is known to be a list (ie, local and assigned as list
> (BUILD_LIST) or a list comprehension), could we do something like this
> as a peephole optimization?

Alternatively, couldn't LIST_APPEND check that this really is a list,
and, if it isn't, fall back to PyObject_CallMethod?

Not sure which .append call is performed most frequently, but the
traditional trick of caching x.append in a local variable might give
you most of the speedup.

Regards,
Martin