[Python-ideas] Bytecode for calling function with keyword arguments

[Serhiy Storchaka]

On 21.04.16 19:00, Chris Angelico wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 1:52 AM, Serhiy Storchaka <storchaka at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 2. Since the number of keyword arguments is obtained from tuple's size, new
>> CALL_FUNCTION opcode needs only the number of positional arguments. It's
>> argument is simpler and needs less bits (important for wordcode).
>
> What about calls that don't include any keyword arguments? Currently,
> no pushing is done. Will you have two opcodes, one if there are kwargs
> and one if there are not?

Yes, we need either two opcodes, or a falg in the argument. I prefer the 
first approach to keep the argument short and simple.

> Also: How does this interact with **dict calls?

For now we have separate opcode for calls with **kwargs. We will have 
corresponding opcode with new way to provide keyword arguments.

Instead of 4 current opcodes we will need at most 8 new opcodes. May be 
less, because calls with *args or **kwargs is less performance critical, 
we can pack arguments in a tuple and a dict by separate opcodes and call 
a function just with a tuple and a dict.