str.Template 4 times slower than calling replace multiple times

[John Machin]

On Mar 9, 3:15 pm, Jack Steven <a... at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Isn't string.Template suppose to be faster than calling replace multiple
> times? That's what I thought until I benchmarked this code, where
> string.Template ended up being 4 times slower.
>
> This doesn't make sense to me, since unlike when you are calling replace
> multiple times, code behind Template can scan the string only once, and it
> doesn't have to allocate multiple strings. So why is slower? Is there a way
> to improve it's speed?
>
> from string import Template
> from time import time
>
> def test1(format, user, channel, message):
>     nick, id, host = user
>     s = format
>     s = s.replace('$nick', nick)
>     s = s.replace('$id', id)
>     s = s.replace('$host', host)
>     s = s.replace('$channel', channel)
>     s = s.replace('$message', message)
>
> def test2(format, user, channel, message):
>     nick, id, host = user
>     s = Template(format)
>     d = {
>         'nick': nick,
>         'id': id,
>         'host': host,
>         'channel': channel,
>         'message': message,
>     }
>     s = s.substitute(d)
>
> user    = ('jacks-', 'id', '127.0.0.1')
> channel = '#test'
> message = 'this is a message'
> format  = '<$nick@$host> $message'
>
> for test in (test1, test2):
>     start = time()
>     for i in xrange(100000):
>         test(format, user, channel, message)
>     end = time()
>     print 'Done in %f seconds' % (end - start)

A couple of points:
(a) string.Template is written in Python, not C so (1) it runs slower
(2) you can get some of your answer from the source on your computer
(b) It has to be smarter than shotgun replaces ... You may know that
your template contains "$nick" and not "$nick $nickname $nickers" but
it doesn't.