Python 2.0b1 performance

[Donn Cave]

How is performance looking for folks?

For a ``hello, world'' that imports sys & string I get a third
more time elapsed during execution - that is, Python 2.0 can
execute this script 75 times in the time it takes Python 1.5.2
to execute 100 times.

Size (resident set size) reported by "ps" is half again greater.

This is compiled --without-cycle-gc, gcc -O2 -g on FreeBSD 4.1,
Intel Pentium II PC, single user.  Same options and host for
Python 1.5.2, except of course for --without-cycle-gc.

	Donn Cave, donn at u.washington.edu