Feature suggestion: sum() ought to use a compensated summation algorithm

[Thomas Dybdahl Ahle]

On Sat, 2008-05-03 at 21:37 +0000, Ivan Illarionov wrote:
> On Sat, 03 May 2008 20:44:19 +0200, Szabolcs Horvát wrote:
> 
> > Arnaud Delobelle wrote:
> >> 
> >> sum() works for any sequence of objects with an __add__ method, not
> >> just floats!  Your algorithm is specific to floats.
> > 
> > This occurred to me also, but then I tried
> > 
> > sum(['abc', 'efg'], '')
> 
> Interesting, I always thought that sum is like shortcut of
> reduce(operator.add, ...), but I was mistaken.
> 
> reduce() is more forgiving:
> reduce(operator.add, ['abc', 'efg'], '' ) # it works
> 'abcefg'

Hm, it works for lists:
sum(([1], [2]), []) 
[1, 2]

However I find the seccond argument hack ugly.
Does the sum way have any performance advantages over the reduce way?

-- 
Best Regards,
Med Venlig Hilsen,
Thomas