Python and STL efficiency

[bearophileHUGS at lycos.com]

This thread can be useful for ShedSkin (the Python => C++ translator),
because often it manages strings slower than CPython still, some
suggestions from a C++ expert can surely improve things a lot. C++ is
fast, but you have to use and know it well, otherwise you don't obtain
much speed.

Maybe this can be useful to speed up C++ hashing (now used in ShedSkin
too):
http://www.azillionmonkeys.com/qed/hash.html

I suggest to test this code with the D language too, it has built-in
dicts too (associative arrays, impleented with trees and not hashes),
so the source code needed is pretty short.

Bye,
bearophile