[Python-Dev] Very Strange Argument Handling Behavior

[Raymond Hettinger]

On Apr 16, 2010, at 2:42 PM, Daniel Stutzbach wrote:
> 
> IIRC, there's a performance hack in dictobject.c that keeps track of whether all of the keys are strings or not.  The hack is designed so that lookup operations can call the string compare/hash functions directly if possible, rather than going through the slower PyObject_ functions.
> 
> Consequently, validating **kwds should be cheap.
> 

Good thinking.

That would definitely be better than scanning the full dict on every call.


Raymond


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