[Python-Dev] Why is Bytecode the way it is?

[Raymond Hettinger]

> Why does the RETURN_VALUE opcode have to return something from the
> stack? Why not have a RETURN_VAR opcode that would directly return a
> variable or constant? (a leading bit could indicate whether to look in
> the const or var tuple).

If the goal is speed, there isn't much to be had.  LOAD_CONSTANT is
blazingly fast and the goto fast_next_opcode cheapens the cost of the
trip around the eval loop.

The eval loop is already pretty tight.  Short of moving to a direct
threading model or some such, the only remaining big boost would be to
move all the tracing/profiling mumbo-jumbo into a separate eval
function.

As for tweaking opcodes, the biggest remaining wins are in LOAD_ATTR and
CALL_FUNCTION.  They've been specialized enough that making further
improvements is non-trivial.

To a lesser extent, there is some pay-off to localizing global lookups.
My experiments show there is only about a 5% total gain to be had.
Localizing is easy; determining what can safely be localized is a
briarpatch.


Raymond