str.Template 4 times slower than calling replace multiple times

[Jack Steven]

Isn't string.Template suppose to be faster than calling replace multiple
times? That's what I thought until I benchmarked this code, where
string.Template ended up being 4 times slower.

This doesn't make sense to me, since unlike when you are calling replace
multiple times, code behind Template can scan the string only once, and it
doesn't have to allocate multiple strings. So why is slower? Is there a way
to improve it's speed?


from string import Template
from time import time

def test1(format, user, channel, message):
    nick, id, host = user
    s = format
    s = s.replace('$nick', nick)
    s = s.replace('$id', id)
    s = s.replace('$host', host)
    s = s.replace('$channel', channel)
    s = s.replace('$message', message)

def test2(format, user, channel, message):
    nick, id, host = user
    s = Template(format)
    d = {
        'nick': nick,
        'id': id,
        'host': host,
        'channel': channel,
        'message': message,
    }
    s = s.substitute(d)

user    = ('jacks-', 'id', '127.0.0.1')
channel = '#test'
message = 'this is a message'
format  = '<$nick@$host> $message'

for test in (test1, test2):
    start = time()
    for i in xrange(100000):
        test(format, user, channel, message)
    end = time()
    print 'Done in %f seconds' % (end - start)