[Python-Dev] Activating pymalloc

[Tim Peters]

[Skip Montanaro]
> If I remember the discussion correctly, there's not really much (if
> any) performance benefit to using the macro versions.

This depends on which macro/function pair you're talking about.  For
example, PyMem_Free is less efficient than PyMem_FREE, and always will be.
The discussion you're remembering was specically about some PyObject_XXX
spellings.  There are no "general principles" here, and the attempt to
introduce some did so at the cost of wishing away a decade of reality --
it's doomed to remain something of a mess now.

> Since the the macro and function versions of each "function" seem
> to be paired in your tables,

True of the second table but not of the first.  Read the whole message for
why that's so.

> why not simply define the macros to map to the functions for backward
> compatibility and deprecate the macros altogether?

See above.  More valuable in the end would be to deprecate 6 of the 8
current ways to spell "free" that aren't already spelled "free".  But nobody
will agree to that, so no point.

> That would have the added benefit of reducing your second table by
> nearly half again.

Reducing the number of *categories* would be of practical value.  Even if we
had no macro spellings at all, the second table would have the same number
of categories as now.