Obtain cleaner coding and a system wide
performance boost by using the fast, pre-parsed
PyArg_Unpack function instead of PyArg_ParseTuple
function which is driven by a format string.
Most of these patches are from Thomas Heller, with long lines folded
by Tim. The change to test_descr.py is from Guido. See the bug report.
Not a bugfix candidate -- METH_CLASS is new in 2.3.
expensive and overly general PyObject_IsInstance(), call
PyObject_TypeCheck() which is a macro that often avoids a call, and if
it does make a call, calls the much more efficient PyType_IsSubtype().
This saved 6% on a benchmark for slot lookups.
These built-in functions are replaced by their (now callable) type:
slice()
buffer()
and these types can also be called (but have no built-in named
function named after them)
classobj (type name used to be "class")
code
function
instance
instancemethod (type name used to be "instance method")
The module "new" has been replaced with a small backward compatibility
placeholder in Python.
A large portion of the patch simply removes the new module from
various platform-specific build recipes. The following binary Mac
project files still have references to it:
Mac/Build/PythonCore.mcp
Mac/Build/PythonStandSmall.mcp
Mac/Build/PythonStandalone.mcp
[I've tweaked the code layout and the doc strings here and there, and
added a comment to types.py about StringTypes vs. basestring. --Guido]
no get function was defined, the property's doc string was
inaccessible. This was because the test for prop_get was made
*before* the test for a NULL/None object argument.
Also changed the property class defined in Python in a comment to test
for NULL to decide between get and delete; this makes it less Python
but then, assigning None to a property doesn't delete it!
test dramatically:
class T(tuple): __dynamic__ = 1
t = T(range(1000))
for i in range(1000): tt = tuple(t)
The speedup was about 5x compared to the previous state of CVS (1.7
vs. 8.8, in arbitrary time units). But it's still more than twice as
slow as as the same test with __dynamic__ = 0 (0.8).
I'm not sure that I really want to go through the trouble of this kind
of speedup for every slot. Even doing it just for the most popular
slots will be a major effort (the new slot_sq_item is 40+ lines, while
the old one was one line with a powerful macro -- unfortunately the
speedup comes from expanding the macro and doing things in a way
specific to the slot signature).
An alternative that I'm currently considering is sketched in PLAN.txt:
trap setattr on type objects. But this will require keeping track of
all derived types using weak references.
instances).
Also added GC support to various auxiliary types: super, property,
descriptors, wrappers, dictproxy. (Only type objects have a tp_clear
field; the other types are.)
One change was necessary to the GC infrastructure. We have statically
allocated type objects that don't have a GC header (and can't easily
be given one) and heap-allocated type objects that do have a GC
header. Giving these different metatypes would be really ugly: I
tried, and I had to modify pickle.py, cPickle.c, copy.py, add a new
invent a new name for the new metatype and make it a built-in, change
affected tests... In short, a mess. So instead, we add a new type
slot tp_is_gc, which is a simple Boolean function that determines
whether a particular instance has GC headers or not. This slot is
only relevant for types that have the (new) GC flag bit set. If the
tp_is_gc slot is NULL (by far the most common case), all instances of
the type are deemed to have GC headers. This slot is called by the
PyObject_IS_GC() macro (which is only used twice, both times in
gcmodule.c).
I also changed the extern declarations for a bunch of GC-related
functions (_PyObject_GC_Del etc.): these always exist but objimpl.h
only declared them when WITH_CYCLE_GC was defined, but I needed to be
able to reference them without #ifdefs. (When WITH_CYCLE_GC is not
defined, they do the same as their non-GC counterparts anyway.)
- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel, doc.
Note that the real purpose of the 'f' prefix is to make fdel fit in
('del' is a keyword, so can't used as a keyword argument name).
- These map to visible readonly attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel',
and '__doc__' in the property object.
- fget/fset/fdel weren't discoverable from Python before.
- __doc__ is new, and allows to associate a docstring with a property.
no backwards compatibility to worry about, so I just pushed the
'closure' struct member to the back -- it's never used in the current
code base (I may eliminate it, but that's more work because the getter
and setter signatures would have to change.)
As examples, I added actual docstrings to the getset attributes of a
few types: file.closed, xxsubtype.spamdict.state.
compatibility, this required all places where an array of "struct
memberlist" structures was declared that is referenced from a type's
tp_members slot to change the type of the structure to PyMemberDef;
"struct memberlist" is now only used by old code that still calls
PyMember_Get/Set. The code in PyObject_GenericGetAttr/SetAttr now
calls the new APIs PyMember_GetOne/SetOne, which take a PyMemberDef
argument.
As examples, I added actual docstrings to the attributes of a few
types: file, complex, instance method, super, and xxsubtype.spamlist.
Also converted the symtable to new style getattr.
the delete function. (Question: should the attribute name also be
recorded in the getset object? That makes the protocol more work, but
may give us better error messages.)
- descrobject.c:descr_check(): only believe None means the same as
NULL if the type given is None's type.
- typeobject.c:wrap_descr_get(): don't "conventiently" default an
absent type to the type of the object argument. Let the called
function figure it out.
Raymond Hettinger
Tim Peters
Guido van Rossum
Neal Norwitz
Martin v. Löwis
Neil Schemenauer
Walter Dörwald
Barry Warsaw