PyObject_CallFunctionObArgs() and PyObject_CallMethodObArgs() have the
advantage that no format strings need to be parsed. The CallMethod
variant also avoids creating a new string object in order to retrieve
a method from an object as well.
outer level, the iterator protocol is used for memory-efficiency (the
outer sequence may be very large if fully materialized); at the inner
level, PySequence_Fast() is used for time-efficiency (these should
always be sequences of length 2).
dictobject.c, new functions PyDict_{Merge,Update}FromSeq2. These are
wholly analogous to PyDict_{Merge,Update}, but process a sequence-of-2-
sequences argument instead of a mapping object. For now, I left these
functions file static, so no corresponding doc changes. It's tempting
to change dict.update() to allow a sequence-of-2-seqs argument too.
Also changed the name of dictionary's keyword argument from "mapping"
to "x". Got a better name? "mapping_or_sequence_of_pairs" isn't
attractive, although more so than "mosop" <wink>.
abstract.h, abstract.tex: Added new PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE function,
much faster than going thru the all-purpose PySequence_Size.
libfuncs.tex:
- Document dictionary().
- Fiddle tuple() and list() to admit that their argument is optional.
- The long-winded repetitions of "a sequence, a container that supports
iteration, or an iterator object" is getting to be a PITA. Many
months ago I suggested factoring this out into "iterable object",
where the definition of that could include being explicit about
generators too (as is, I'm not sure a reader outside of PythonLabs
could guess that "an iterator object" includes a generator call).
- Please check my curly braces -- I'm going blind <0.9 wink>.
abstract.c, PySequence_Tuple(): When PyObject_GetIter() fails, leave
its error msg alone now (the msg it produces has improved since
PySequence_Tuple was generalized to accept iterable objects, and
PySequence_Tuple was also stomping on the msg in cases it shouldn't
have even before PyObject_GetIter grew a better msg).
iterable object. I'm not sure how that got overlooked before!
Got rid of the internal _PySequence_IterContains, introduced a new
internal _PySequence_IterSearch, and rewrote all the iteration-based
"count of", "index of", and "is the object in it or not?" routines to
just call the new function. I suppose it's slower this way, but the
code duplication was getting depressing.
This introduces:
- A new operator // that means floor division (the kind of division
where 1/2 is 0).
- The "future division" statement ("from __future__ import division)
which changes the meaning of the / operator to implement "true
division" (where 1/2 is 0.5).
- New overloadable operators __truediv__ and __floordiv__.
- New slots in the PyNumberMethods struct for true and floor division,
new abstract APIs for them, new opcodes, and so on.
I emphasize that without the future division statement, the semantics
of / will remain unchanged until Python 3.0.
Not yet implemented are warnings (default off) when / is used with int
or long arguments.
This has been on display since 7/31 as SF patch #443474.
Flames to /dev/null.
safely together and don't duplicate logic (the common logic was factored
out into new private API function _PySequence_IterContains()).
Visible change:
some_complex_number in some_instance
no longer blows up if some_instance has __getitem__ but neither
__contains__ nor __iter__. test_iter changed to ensure that remains true.
NEEDS DOC CHANGES.
This one surprised me! While I expected tuple() to be a no-brainer, turns
out it's actually dripping with consequences:
1. It will *allow* the popular PySequence_Fast() to work with any iterable
object (code for that not yet checked in, but should be trivial).
2. It caused two std tests to fail. This because some places used
PyTuple_Sequence() (the C spelling of tuple()) as an indirect way to test
whether something *is* a sequence. But tuple() code only looked for the
existence of sq->item to determine that, and e.g. an instance passed
that test whether or not it supported the other operations tuple()
needed (e.g., __len__). So some things the tests *expected* to fail
with an AttributeError now fail with a TypeError instead. This looks
like an improvement to me; e.g., test_coercion used to produce 559
TypeErrors and 2 AttributeErrors, and now they're all TypeErrors. The
error details are more informative too, because the places calling this
were *looking* for TypeErrors in order to replace the generic tuple()
"not a sequence" msg with their own more specific text, and
AttributeErrors snuck by that.
sees it (test_iter.py is unchanged).
- Added a tp_iternext slot, which calls the iterator's next() method;
this is much faster for built-in iterators over built-in types
such as lists and dicts, speeding up pybench's ForLoop with about
25% compared to Python 2.1. (Now there's a good argument for
iterators. ;-)
- Renamed the built-in sequence iterator SeqIter, affecting the C API
functions for it. (This frees up the PyIter prefix for generic
iterator operations.)
- Added PyIter_Check(obj), which checks that obj's type has a
tp_iternext slot and that the proper feature flag is set.
- Added PyIter_Next(obj) which calls the tp_iternext slot. It has a
somewhat complex return condition due to the need for speed: when it
returns NULL, it may not have set an exception condition, meaning
the iterator is exhausted; when the exception StopIteration is set
(or a derived exception class), it means the same thing; any other
exception means some other error occurred.
new slot tp_iter in type object, plus new flag Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_ITER
new C API PyObject_GetIter(), calls tp_iter
new builtin iter(), with two forms: iter(obj), and iter(function, sentinel)
new internal object types iterobject and calliterobject
new exception StopIteration
new opcodes for "for" loops, GET_ITER and FOR_ITER (also supported by dis.py)
new magic number for .pyc files
new special method for instances: __iter__() returns an iterator
iteration over dictionaries: "for x in dict" iterates over the keys
iteration over files: "for x in file" iterates over lines
TODO:
documentation
test suite
decide whether to use a different way to spell iter(function, sentinal)
decide whether "for key in dict" is a good idea
use iterators in map/filter/reduce, min/max, and elsewhere (in/not in?)
speed tuning (make next() a slot tp_next???)
except that it always returns Unicode objects.
A new C API PyObject_Unicode() is also provided.
This closes patch #101664.
Written by Marc-Andre Lemburg. Copyright assigned to Guido van Rossum.
This doesn't change the copyright status for these files -- just the
markings! Doing it on the main branch for these three files for which
the HEAD revision was pushed back into 1.6.
comments, docstrings or error messages. I fixed two minor things in
test_winreg.py ("didn't" -> "Didn't" and "Didnt" -> "Didn't").
There is a minor style issue involved: Guido seems to have preferred English
grammar (behaviour, honour) in a couple places. This patch changes that to
American, which is the more prominent style in the source. I prefer English
myself, so if English is preferred, I'd be happy to supply a patch myself ;)
Mark Hammond
Martin v. Löwis
Jeremy Hylton
Fred Drake
Tim Peters
Guido van Rossum
Marc-André Lemburg
Thomas Wouters
Andrew M. Kuchling