[Python-Dev] Possible optimization for LOAD_FAST ?

[Neil Schemenauer]

Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:
> On Jan 04, 2011, at 10:21 AM, Alex Gaynor wrote:
>
>>Ugh, I can't be the only one who finds these special cases to be a little
>>nasty?
>>
>>Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
>
> Yeah, I agree.  Still it would be interesting to see what kind of
> performance improvement this would result in.  That seems to be
> the only way to decide whether the cost is worth the benefit.

Yuck from me as well.  I would guess that attribute lookups would be
just as significant as global variable lookups (depending on coding
style, of course).  In contrast, the local variable semantic change
provided a big speed increase for a minor language complexity cost.

  Neil