A critique of cgi.escape

[Dan Bishop]

Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> In message <mailman.570.1159194107.10491.python-list at python.org>, Fredrik
> Lundh wrote:
>
> > Max M wrote:
> >
> >> It also makes the  escaped html harder to read for standard cases.
> >
> > and slows things down a bit.
> >
> > (cgi.escape(s, True) is slower than cgi.escape(s), for reasons that are
> > obvious for anyone who's looked at the code).
>
> What you're doing is adding to the reasons why the existing cgi.escape
> function is stupidly designed and implemented. The True case is by far the
> most common, so to make that the slow case, as well as being the
> non-default case, is doubly brain-dead.

How exactly would you make s = s.replace('"',""") faster than
*not* doing the replacement?