[Python-Dev] PyDict_SetItem hook (original) (raw)

Christian Heimes lists at cheimes.de
Thu Apr 2 03:23:41 CEST 2009

John Ehresman wrote:

* To what extent should non-debugger code use the hook? At one end of the spectrum, the hook could be made readily available for non-debug use and at the other end, it could be documented as being debug only, disabled in python -O, & not exposed in the stdlib to python code.

To explain Collin's mail: Python's dict implementation is crucial to the performance of any Python program. Modules, types, instances all rely on the speed of Python's dict type because most of them use a dict to store their name space. Even the smallest change to the C code may lead to a severe performance penalty. This is especially true for set and get operations.

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