[Python-Dev] Fast access to builtins (original) (raw)

Greg Ewing greg@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz
Fri, 28 Mar 2003 14:48:37 +1200 (NZST)

Neil Schemenauer <nas@python.ca>:

Optimization options that globally change semantics seem like a bad idea. How would you know some module you are using will not break? I agree with Mark that a per-module switch would be better.

There's something a bit strange about this situation, though.

The compiler knows whether a module shadows any of its own builtins, and can avoid applying the optimisation to those names. So the optimisation doesn't change the semantics of the module itself, provided some conditions are met.

But those conditions depend on things outside the module -- namely, whether any other module assigns to one of this module's globals so as to shadow a builtin.

This makes me think that having a flag inside the module is not the right thing to do, or at least it's not the only thing that's needed. There needs to be a way to turn the optimisation off from outside the affected module.

Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, +--------------------------------------+ University of Canterbury, | A citizen of NewZealandCorp, a | Christchurch, New Zealand | wholly-owned subsidiary of USA Inc. | greg@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz +--------------------------------------+