How to write Inline Functions in Python?

[Brian Quinlan]

Michael Stenner wrote:
> I feel like we're going around in circles here.  I'm talking about
> python.  It looks like 'inline' would produce serious speedups in some
> cases.  Therefore, it looks like an inline command would not be
> useless.

Doing this would be almost impossible because Python name binding is
done at runtime. For example, how would you compile this?

if random.choice([0, 1]):
    from foo import baz # baz is an inline function
else:
    from bar import baz # baz is an inline function


def my_func():
    baz()

Or this?

inline def foo():
    ....

inline def bar():
    ....

def my_func()
    foo()
    globals['foo'] = bar
    foo()


Or this?

from bar import baz # baz is an inline function

def my_func()
    ....
    return baz # the fact that baz is inline isn't known at compile time

Not that an inline keyword should be added to the language even if it
were possible...

Cheers,
Brian