On Wednesday 23 August 2006 02:57, Lenard Lindstrom wrote: > ... The instance dict is searched only if one is not > found. So having a descriptor reduces the search time. And a slot > descriptor does not do a dict lookup. So slots should be faster, > though I have not confirmed it.
The function call overhead (for the getter) is much greater than the fallback to a dict lookup (which is insanely fast). We did some optimisation of function calls at the Need For Speed sprint in Iceland, but I only managed to squeeze out a 5% improvement (aka "noise") and others didn't fare much better. I'd be interested to see some *actual* numbers, but I'd be surprised if slots are faster than regular attributes. Unless there's been some slot-specific optimisation I've missed along the way :) Richard