On Thu, Sep 13, 2007 at 12:19:21PM +0200, André Malo wrote: > > Pardon my ignorance but why does Python do reference counting for truly > > global and static objects like None, True, False, small and cached > > integers, sys and other builtins? If I understand it correctly these > > objects are never garbaged collected (at least they shouldn't) until the > > interpreter exits. Wouldn't it decrease the overhead and increase speed > > when Py_INCREF and Py_DECREF are NOOPs for static and immutable objects? > > The check what kind of object you have takes time, too. Right now, just > counting up or down is most likely faster than that check on every refcount > operation.
To put it another way, would it actually matter if the reference counts for such objects became hopelessly wrong due to non-atomic adjustments? _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
