Python code written in 1998, how to improve/change it?

[Magnus Lycka]

Wolfgang Keller wrote:
> The way I understand this, resuming a generator causes less overhead than the 
> inital overhead of a function call.

I don't have Python 2.4 handy, but it doesn't seem to be true in 2.3.
I'm not very proficient with generators though, so maybe I'm doing
something stupid here...

 >>> from __future__ import generators
 >>> def f():
...     return 1
...
 >>> def g():
...     while 1:
...         yield 1
...
 >>> it = g()
 >>> import time
 >>> def t(c, n):
...     start = time.time()
...     for i in xrange(n):
...         c()
...     print time.time()-start
...
 >>> t(f,1000000)
0.277699947357
 >>> t(f,1000000)
0.279093980789
 >>> t(f,1000000)
0.270813941956
 >>> t(it.next,1000000)
0.297060966492
 >>> t(it.next,1000000)
0.263942956924
 >>> t(it.next,1000000)
0.293347120285

For refernce:
 >>> def t0(c, n):
...     start = time.time()
...     for i in xrange(n):
...         pass
...     print time.time()-start
...
 >>> t0(it.next,1000000)
0.0523891448975

Maybe the ratio is completely different in a newer Python than
2.3.4 (RH EL3 standard install). Or maybe it's very different if
there are plenty of local variables etc in f / g.