Most efficient way to write data out to a text file?

[Bengt Richter]

On Sat, 29 Jun 2002 19:05:18 GMT, "Fredrik Lundh" <fredrik at pythonware.com> wrote:

>Dave Kuhlman wrote:
>
[...]
>> Is finding things in globals slower than finding them in locals?
>
>yes.  Python assigns integer indices to local names, and
>stores the corresponding objects in an array.
>
Is this done for built-in keywords also? ISTM a standard list
of indices could be defined for a particular Python version,
and code generated to take advantage.

Maybe even a range of byte codes could be reserved for much-used
functions, as opposed to looking them up and then executing
a general function-call byte code to go there. It should be
possible to make this an efficient default, while still allowing
for straight-forward local shadowing bindings, IWT.

E.g., instead of the code for abs(x) being

           3 LOAD_NAME                0 (abs)
           6 LOAD_NAME                1 (x)
           9 CALL_FUNCTION            1

it might be
          6 LOAD_NAME                1 (x)
          9 CALL_BUILTIN_0           1

where e.g. CALL_BUILTIN_0 .. CALL_BUILTIN_31 might be the reserved range
for builtin functions in the special list.

However
          3 LOAD_NAME                0 (x)
          6 LOAD_CONST               0 (0)
          9 CALL_BUILTIN_X           1

would probably be about as fast, though not as compact.

If necessary to make it unambiguous and to make compilation easier, you could have
a "builtin" declaration analogous to "global." Or the usage might be popular enough
that you'd want a way to opt out instead of opt in. Since it's a bad idea to rebind
keywords anyway, maybe backwards compatibility wouldn't be too much of a problem if
it were default for some builtins functions in a future version?

Hm, seems like you could do static arg count checks too for this kind of builtin use.

Hm2, wonder if you could allow user-defined assignment of functions to dynamically
assigned byte codes within a user range using "builtin user_func" declarations,
so that compilation would make analogous code like that suggested for real builtins.

OTTOMH just now, not exactly PEP-ready ;-)

Regards,
Bengt Richter