[Python-Dev] Python 3000: Special type for object attributes & map keys

Wed Mar 5 22:27:32 CET 2008

It appears to me that if you can make mapping mechanisms faster in 
Python you can make significant
overall speed improvements. I also think the proposed concept could 
add flexibility to persistence formats
and RMI interfaces.
My basic idea is to have a constant string type with an interpreter 
globally unique hash. If the original constant
is created in a manner different from string constants, it can be 
tracked and handled differently by the interpreter.
Obviously most object attribute references are done with the dot 
operator, so I guess the interpreter already has
an efficient mapping mechanism. But there must be a crossover with 
__getattr__ etc, where a map of some sort is
used. I imagine that having a global namespace to translate attribute 
names into integers could be used for several
purposes by the interpreter as well as an application exchanging 
objects with other applications.
I imagine these expressions to be supported:
* attrname(string) - creates an attrname value from the string
* int(attrname) - gets the hash value
* string(attrname) - gets the string value
Hope this makes sense
Henrik
P.S. I originally thought of this in a JavaScript context so forgive 
me if this would make little difference in Python.