speedy Python strings?

[Josiah Carlson]

> Note that there's been some very interesting discussions on python-dev
> recently that may end up alleviating this issue somewhat in the future - but
> no promises - there doesn't appear to be a consensus on the "right way" ...

I've been following it.  My favorite solution is to not change the
structure of the list at all, and to offer a reasonably fast fifo queue
in a standard library module with a bunch of other useful data
structures.  Then you don't need to worry about breaking C modules that
rely on the list having that behavior, and get some useful data
structures out of the deal.

 - Josiah