array.extend() now accepts iterable arguments implements as a series
of appends. Besides being a user convenience and matching the behavior
for lists, this the saves memory and cycles that would be used to
create a temporary array object.
lists. Speeds append() operations and reduces memory requirements
(because of more conservative overallocation).
Paves the way for the feature request for array.extend() to support
arbitrary iterable arguments.
The writelines() method now accepts any iterable argument and writes
the lines one at a time rather than using ''.join(lines) followed by
a single write. Results in considerable memory savings and makes the
method suitable for use with generator expressions.
(Championed by Bob Ippolito.)
The update() method for mappings now accepts all the same argument forms
as the dict() constructor. This includes item lists and/or keyword
arguments.
are within proper boundaries as specified in the docs.
This can break possible code (datetime module needed changing, for instance)
that uses 0 for values that need to be greater 1 or greater (month, day, and
day of year).
Fixes bug #897625.
recent gcc on Linux/x86)
[ 899109 ] 1==float('nan')
by implementing rich comparisons for floats.
Seems to make comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising
when the underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
to list_init.
* Replaced the code in list_extend with the superior code from list_fill.
* Eliminated list_fill.
Results:
* list.extend() no longer creates an intermediate tuple except to handle
the special case of x.extend(x). The saves memory and time.
* list.extend(x) runs
about the same x is a list or tuple,
a little faster when x is an iterable not defining __len__, and
twice as fast when x is an iterable defining __len__.
* the code is about 15 lines shorter and no longer duplicates
functionality.
The Py2.3 approach overallocated small lists by up to 8 elements.
The last checkin would limited this to one but slowed down (by 20 to 30%)
the creation of small lists between 3 to 8 elements.
This tune-up balances the two, limiting overallocation to 3 elements
(significantly reducing space consumption from Py2.3) and running faster
than the previous checkin.
The first part of the growth pattern (0, 4, 8, 16) neatly meshes with
allocators that trigger data movement only when crossing a power of two
boundary. Also, then even numbers mesh well with common data alignments.
realloc(). This is achieved by tracking the overallocation size in a new
field and using that information to skip calls to realloc() whenever
possible.
* Simplified and tightened the amount of overallocation. For larger lists,
this overallocates by 1/8th (compared to the previous scheme which ranged
between 1/4th to 1/32nd over-allocation). For smaller lists (n<6), the
maximum overallocation is one byte (formerly it could be upto eight bytes).
This saves memory in applications with large numbers of small lists.
* Eliminated the NRESIZE macro in favor of a new, static list_resize function
that encapsulates the resizing logic. Coverting this back to macro would
give a small (under 1%) speed-up. This was too small to warrant the loss
of readability, maintainability, and de-coupling.
* Some functions using NRESIZE had grown unnecessarily complex in their
efforts to bend to the macro's calling pattern. With the new list_resize
function in place, those other functions could be simplified. That is
being saved for a separate patch.
* The ob_item==NULL check could be eliminated from the new list_resize
function. This would entail finding each piece of code that sets ob_item
to NULL and adding a new line to invalidate the overallocation tracking
field. Rather than impose a new requirement on other pieces of list code,
it was preferred to leave the NULL check in place and retain the benefits
of decoupling, maintainability and information hiding (only PyList_New()
and list_sort() need to know about the new field). This approach also
reduces the odds of breaking an extension module.
(Collaborative effort by Raymond Hettinger, Hye-Shik Chang, Tim Peters,
and Armin Rigo.)
which can be reviewed via
http://coding.derkeiler.com/Archive/Python/comp.lang.python/2003-12/1011.html
Duncan Booth investigated, and discovered that an "optimisation" was
in fact a pessimisation for small numbers of elements in a source list,
compared to not having the optimisation, although with large numbers
of elements in the source list the optimisation was quite beneficial.
He posted his change to comp.lang.python (but not to SF).
Further research has confirmed his assessment that the optimisation only
becomes a net win when the source list has more than 100 elements.
I also found that the optimisation could apply to tuples as well,
but the gains only arrive with source tuples larger than about 320
elements and are nowhere near as significant as the gains with lists,
(~95% gain @ 10000 elements for lists, ~20% gain @ 10000 elements for
tuples) so I haven't proceeded with this.
The code as it was applied the optimisation to list subclasses as
well, and this also appears to be a net loss for all reasonable sized
sources (~80-100% for up to 100 elements, ~20% for more than 500
elements; I tested up to 10000 elements).
Duncan also suggested special casing empty lists, which I've extended
to all empty sequences.
On the basis that list_fill() is only ever called with a list for the
result argument, testing for the source being the destination has
now happens before testing source types.
Original idea by Guido van Rossum.
Idea for skipable inner iterators by Raymond Hettinger.
Idea for argument order and identity function default by Alex Martelli.
Implementation by Hye-Shik Chang (with tweaks by Raymond Hettinger).
comments about why both calls to cyclic gc here can cause problems.
I'll backport to 2.3 maint. Since the calls were introduced in 2.3,
that will be the end of it.
Just van Rossum
Martin v. Löwis
Raymond Hettinger
Brett Cannon
Hye-Shik Chang
Neil Schemenauer
Skip Montanaro
Michael W. Hudson
Gustavo Niemeyer
Jim Fulton
Fred Drake
Marc-André Lemburg
Barry Warsaw
Andrew MacIntyre
Jeremy Hylton
Thomas Heller
Walter Dörwald
Tim Peters