[Python-Dev] Dictionary sparseness (original) (raw)

Tim Peters tim.one@comcast.net
Mon, 12 May 2003 16:58:27 -0400

[Walter D=F6rwald]

... Has anybody tried state machines for symbol tables in Python?

Not that I know of.

The size of the transition table might be a problem and any attempt to reduce the size might kill performance in the inner loop. Performancewise stringobject.c/stringhash() is hard to beat (especially when the hash value is already cached).

Which is why, if nobody ever did or ever does try alternative approac= hes, I would be neither surprised nor disappointed <0.9 wink>.