untrackable objects are not tracked by the garbage collector. This can
reduce the size of collections and therefore the garbage collection overhead
on long-running programs, depending on their particular use of datatypes.
(trivia: this makes the "binary_trees" benchmark from the Computer Language
Shootout 40% faster)
Allows dictionaries to be pre-sized (upto 255 elements) saving time lost
to re-sizes with their attendant mallocs and re-insertions.
Has zero effect on small dictionaries (5 elements or fewer), a slight
benefit for dicts upto 22 elements (because they had to resize once
anyway), and more benefit for dicts upto 255 elements (saving multiple
resizes during the build-up and reducing the number of collisions on
the first insertions). Beyond 255 elements, there is no addional benefit.
of some of the common builtin types.
Use a bit in tp_flags for each common builtin type. Check the bit
to determine if any instance is a subclass of these common types.
The check avoids a function call and O(n) search of the base classes.
The check is done in the various Py*_Check macros rather than calling
PyType_IsSubtype().
All the bits are set in tp_flags when the type is declared
in the Objects/*object.c files because PyType_Ready() is not called
for all the types. Should PyType_Ready() be called for all types?
If so and the change is made, the changes to the Objects/*object.c files
can be reverted (remove setting the tp_flags). Objects/typeobject.c
would also have to be modified to add conditions
for Py*_CheckExact() in addition to each the PyType_IsSubtype check.
semantics to include subtypes. Most concrete object APIs then had
a Py<type>_CheckExact() macro added to test for an object's type
not including subtypes.
The PyDict_CheckExact() macro wasn't created at that time, so I've added
it for API completeness/symmetry - even though nobody has complained
about its absence in the time since 2.2 was released.
Not a backport candidate.
with most other concrete object checks, but the docs weren't brought into
line.
PyList_CheckExact() was added at 2.2 but never documented.
backport candidate.
PyDict_UpdateFromSeq2(): removed it.
PyDict_MergeFromSeq2(): made it public and documented it.
PyDict_Merge() docs: updated to reveal <wink> that the second
argument can be any mapping object.
implementation. This was really to test whether my new CVS+SSH
setup is more usable than the old one -- and turns out it is (for
whatever reason, it was impossible to do a commit before that
involved more than one directory).
