[Python-ideas] Intermediate Summary: Fast sum() for non-numbers

[David Mertz]

On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 7:12 PM, Ron Adam <ron3200 at gmail.com> wrote:

> >      + 1   Add specialised sum_iters(),  (based on the sum()
>
You mean chain.from_iterable?
>
> No, I mean a new function written in C, which writes (appends) the values
> directly into a new (or start) sequence.  Chain from_iterable builds a
> generator and yields the items out.  That's not going to be as fast, but it
> does use much less memory in many situations.


If a new function could *actually* be significantly faster than
chain.from_iterable(), I think it would be reasonable to have.  However, if
writing something new as basically an alias for 'list(chain(...))' only
gets us, say 10% speedup, I think nothing should be included.

But PLEASE, don't call such a new function sum_iters().  The obviously
correct name for such a thing is 'concat()'.  This is what I've argued a
bunch of times, but let's just call concatenation by its actual name rather
than try to squint in just the right way to convince ourselves that
"summation" is the same concept.



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