[Python-Dev] The "lazy strings" patch
Talin
talin at acm.org
Mon Oct 23 06:07:42 CEST 2006
Larry Hastings wrote:
> Martin v. Löwis wrote:
> Let's be specific: when there is at least one long-lived small lazy
> slice of a large string, and the large string itself would otherwise
> have been dereferenced and freed, and this small slice is never examined
> by code outside of stringobject.c, this approach means the large string
> becomes long-lived too and thus Python consumes more memory overall. In
> pathological scenarios this memory usage could be characterized as "insane".
>
> True dat. Then again, I could suggest some scenarios where this would
> save memory (multiple long-lived large slices of a large string), and
> others where memory use would be a wash (long-lived slices containing
> the all or almost all of a large string, or any scenario where slices
> are short-lived). While I think it's clear lazy slices are *faster* on
> average, its overall effect on memory use in real-world Python is not
> yet known. Read on.
I wonder - how expensive would it be for the string slice to have a weak
reference, and 'normalize' the slice when the big string is collected?
Would the overhead of the weak reference swamp the savings?
-- Talin
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