[Python-Dev] Switch statement

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 07:51 PM 6/23/2006 +0200, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
>Furthermore, the compiler could do other optimizations on the
>const declared names, such as optimizing away global lookups
>and turning them into code object constants lookups.

Technically, they'd have to become LOAD_DEREF on cells set up by the module 
level code and attached to function objects.  'marshal' won't be able to 
save function references or other such objects to a .pyc file.

It's interesting that this line of thinking does get us closer to the 
long-desired builtins optimization.  I'm envisioning:

     static __builtin__.*

or something like that.  Hm.  Maybe:

     from __builtin__ import static *

:)

In practice, however, this doesn't work for * imports unless it causes all 
global-scope names with no statically detectable assignments to become 
static.  That could be a problem for modules that generate symbols 
dynamically, like 'opcode' in the stdlib.

OTOH, maybe we could just have a LOAD_STATIC opcode that works like 
LOAD_DEREF but falls back to using globals if the cell is empty.

Interestingly, a side effect of making names static is that they also 
become private and untouchable from outside the module.

Hm.  Did I miss something, or did we just solve builtin lookup 
optimization?  The only problem I see is that currently you can stick a new 
version of 'len()' into a module from outside it, shadowing the 
builtin.  Under this scheme (of making all read-only names in a module 
become closure variables), such an assignment would change the globals, but 
have no effect on the module's behavior, which would be tied to the static 
definitions created at import time.







>--
>Marc-Andre Lemburg
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