[Python-Dev] Support for "wide" Unicode characters

[Tim Peters]

[Paul Prescod]
> ...
> Consider that computer memory is growing much faster than textual data.
> People's text processing techniques get more and more "wasteful" because
> it is now almost always possible to load the entire "text" into memory
> at once.

Indeed, the entire text of the Bible fits in a corner of my year-old box's
RAM, even at 32 bits per character.

> I remember how some text editors used to boast that they only loaded
> your text "on demand".

Well, they still do -- fancy editors use fancy data structures, so that,
e.g., inserting characters at the start of the file doesn't cause a 50Mb
memmove each time.  Response time is still important, but I'd wager
relatively insensitive to basic character size (you need tricks that cut
factors of 1000s off potential worst cases to give the appearance of
instantaneous results; a factor of 2 or 4 is in the noise compared to what's
needed regardless).