This is all over now, but I do think that the change from char to int was made for alignment reasons. I don't know, but I could certainly imagine that aligned memcpy calls are faster. I can't explain why I still put the 3-byte savings comment in SVN -- perhaps I was in a hurry.
On Sun, Mar 22, 2009 at 12:38 PM, Christian Tismer <tis...@stackless.com> wrote: > On 3/22/09 8:01 PM, "Martin v. Löwis" wrote: >>> >>> Now, the internals are very clear to me. What I don't understand >>> is where the three saved bytes should be. >> >> If you look at the various patches in >> >> http://bugs.python.org/issue576101 >> >> then there is a three-byte saving in all versions from 1 to 6. >> Consequentially, the API was changed in those versions (but only >> starting from version 5, i.e. the first version created by Guido). >> >> For some reason, the saving was then removed from the patch that >> got actually committed (#7). I guess the comment just stayed. > > Yes, funny, actually. At least, I don't find any comment why > the char was turned into an int, after all. > Are char pointers not on a word boundary problematic on some > platforms? > > Or was it maybe to just keep the string layout on many > common platforms compatible, in order to save rebuilding > so many windows extension modules? > > If the latter is true and the only reason, I vote for reclaiming > the three bytes. Maybe it saves a tree or two. Maybe it hurts > very little if done for Python 3000. > > In any case, use the version that saves the most energy. :-) > > not kidding - ciao -- chris > > -- > Christian Tismer :^) <mailto:tis...@stackless.com> > tismerysoft GmbH : Have a break! Take a ride on Python's > Johannes-Niemeyer-Weg 9A : *Starship* http://starship.python.net/ > 14109 Berlin : PGP key -> http://wwwkeys.pgp.net/ > work +49 30 802 86 56 mobile +49 173 24 18 776 fax +49 30 80 90 57 05 > PGP 0x57F3BF04 9064 F4E1 D754 C2FF 1619 305B C09C 5A3B 57F3 BF04 > whom do you want to sponsor today? http://www.stackless.com/ > _______________________________________________ > 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/guido%40python.org > -- --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/) _______________________________________________ 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
