[Python-Dev] New and Improved Import Hooks (original) (raw)

Moore, Paul Paul.Moore@atosorigin.com
Tue, 3 Dec 2002 16:48:14 -0000

From: Just van Rossum [mailto:just@letterror.com]

> I've explained this a couple of times now. Please read > the PEP for details, but Jim claims that zipfile imports > need this if they are not to be too slow.

Well, I am not going to need it: upon reading the zip contents table I build a dict, mapping (full) module names to toc info. One dict lookup will be enough to get at the right data.

But that's exactly what Jim's cache is doing. His code is general, and offers the service to all import methods, rather than restricting it to only zipfiles. His benchmarks showed that this was a (small) win.

Perhaps you could refactor your implementation so that the cache isn't just for zipfiles? (I can easily imagine other extensions that would benefit - tarfiles, metakit databases, imports over the web, ...)

Paul.