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Attached patch rewrites PyUnicode_FromFormatV():
 * simplify the code: replace 4 steps with one unique step. PyUnicode_Format() has the same design. It avoids to store intermediate results which require to allocate an array of pointers in the heap.
 * use the _PyUnicodeWriter API for speed (and its convinient API): overallocate the buffer to reduce the number of "realloc()"
 * Implement "width" and "precision" in Python, don't rely on sprintf(). It avoids to need of a temporary buffer allocated on the heap: only use a small buffer allocated in the stack.
 * Detect integer overflow when parsing width and precision, as done in PyUnicode_Format()
 * Add _PyUnicodeWriter_WriteCstr() function
 * Split PyUnicode_FromFormatV() into smaller functions: add unicode_fromformat_arg(). It requires to copy vargs using Py_VA_COPY: without Py_VA_COPY, the function does crash. I don't understand why.
 * Inline parse_format_flags(): the format of an argument is now only parsed once, it's no more needed to have a subfunction.
 * Optimize PyUnicode_FromFormatV() for characters between two arguments: search the next "%" and copy the substring in one chunk, instead of copying character per character.
 * Replace "prec too big" with "precision too big" in error messages
_tescapi.test_string_from_format() is 20% faster with the patch according to timeit. I don't know how to write better benchmarks because PyUnicode_FromV() is not exposed in Python. I wrote a benchmark using ctypes to call the function, but it looks like the ctypes overhead is too high.
I wrote the patch to simplify the code, but it may be faster thanks to the _PyUnicodeWriter API and some optimizations implemented in the patch.

"Split PyUnicode_FromFormatV() into smaller functions: add unicode_fromformat_arg(). It requires to copy vargs using Py_VA_COPY: without Py_VA_COPY, the function does crash. I don't understand why."
Ok, here is the answer.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8047362/is-gcc-mishandling-a-pointer-to-a-va-list-passed-to-a-function
In short: va_list can be an array (of 1 element) on some platforms (ex: AMD64).

New changeset b4bee17625e1 by Victor Stinner in branch 'default':
Issue #16147: Rewrite PyUnicode_FromFormatV() to use _PyUnicodeWriter API
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/b4bee17625e1
New changeset d1369daeb9ec by Victor Stinner in branch 'default':
Issue #16147: PyUnicode_FromFormatV() now detects integer overflow when parsing
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/d1369daeb9ec
New changeset 5e319fdab563 by Victor Stinner in branch 'default':
Issue #16147: PyUnicode_FromFormatV() now raises an error if the argument of
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/5e319fdab563 

New changeset e16ec3b468d1 by Victor Stinner in branch 'default':
Issue #16147: PyUnicode_FromFormatV() doesn't need anymore to allocate a buffer
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/e16ec3b468d1