locking dictionaries (was Re: New statement proposal for Python)

[Aahz Maruch]

In article <mailman.992835213.24305.python-list at python.org>,
Tim Peters <tim.one at home.com> wrote:
>
>One concern:  since dicts are crucial to Python's performance, we're loathe
>to add any code to their critical paths, or more memory to the object.
>Indeed, I spent a fair chunk of my life reducing the internal dict bloat
>after 2.1 was released, and we got some nice speedups in return.

OTOH, there's been some discussion of locking dicts during certain
operations to prevent some ugly bugs and crashes.  Given the amount of
code simplification that would generate overall, would it maybe make
sense to add an external interface to the locking mechanism?
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