Python's "only one way to do it" philosophy isn't good?
Josiah Carlson
josiah.carlson at sbcglobal.net
Sun Jun 10 10:27:27 EDT 2007
Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> On Sat, 09 Jun 2007 22:52:32 +0000, Josiah Carlson wrote:
>
>> the only thing that optimization
>> currently does in Python at present is to discard docstrings
>
> Python, or at least CPython, does more optimizations than that. Aside from
> run-time optimizations like interned strings etc., there are a small
> number of compiler-time optimizations done.
>
> Running Python with the -O (optimize) flag tells Python to ignore
> assert statements. Using -OO additionally removes docstrings.
Oh yeah, asserts. I never run with -O, and typically don't use asserts,
so having or not having either isn't a big deal for me.
> Regardless of the flag, in function (and class?) definitions like the
> following:
>
> def function(args):
> "Doc string"
> x = 1
> s = "this is a string constant"
> "and this string is treated as a comment"
> return s*x
>
> The string-comment is ignored by the compiler just like "real" comments.
> (The same doesn't necessarily hold for other data types.)
I would guess it is because some other data types may have side-effects.
On the other hand, a peephole optimizer could be written to trim out
unnecessary LOAD_CONST/POP_TOP pairs.
> Some dead code is also optimized away:
Obviously dead code removal happens regardless of optimization level in
current Pythons.
> Lastly, in recent versions (starting with 2.5 I believe) Python includes a
> peephole optimizer that implements simple constant folding:
Constant folding happens regardless of optimization level in current
Pythons.
So really, assert and docstring removals. Eh.
- Josiah
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