[Python-Dev] The "lazy strings" patch [was: PATCH submitted: Speed up + for string concatenation, now as fast as "".join(x) idiom]

[Josiah Carlson]

Larry Hastings <larry at hastings.org> wrote:
> But I'm open 
> to suggestions, on this or any other aspect of the patch.

As Martin, I, and others have suggested, direct the patch towards Python
3.x unicode text.  Also, don't be surprised if Guido says no...
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-3000/2006-August/003334.html

In that message he talks about why view+string or string+view or
view+view should return strings.  Some are not quite applicable in this
case because with your implementation all additions can return a 'view'.
However, he also states the following with regards to strings vs. views
(an earlier variant of the "lazy strings" you propose),
    "Because they can have such different performance and memory usage
     characteristics, it's not right to treat them as the same type."
         - GvR

This suggests (at least to me) that unifying the 'lazy string' with the
2.x string is basically out of the question, which brings me back to my
earlier suggestion; make it into a wrapper that could be used with 3.x
bytes, 3.x text, and perhaps others.

 - Josiah