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

[Josiah Carlson]

Nicko van Someren <nicko at nicko.org> wrote:
> It's not like having this patch is going to force anyone to change  
> the way they write their code.  As far as I can tell it simply offers  
> better performance if you choose to express your code in some common  
> ways.  If it speeds up pystone by 5.5% with such minimal down side  
> I'm hard pressed to see a reason not to use it.

This has to wait until Python 2.6 (which is anywhere from 14-24 months
away, according to history); including it would destroy binary
capatability with modules compiled for 2.5, nevermind that it is a
nontrivial feature addition.

I also think that the original author (or one of this patch's supporters)
should write a PEP outlining the Python 2.5 and earlier drawbacks, what
changes this implementation brings, its improvements, and any potential
drawbacks.


 - Josiah