"Paul Rubin" <http://phr...@nospam.invalid> wrote:
> The series of tests is written that way because there is no case > statement available. It is essentially switching on a bunch of > character constants and then doing some additional tests in each > branch. > > It could be that using ord(c) as an index into a list of functions > might be faster than a dict lookup on c to get a function. I think > John is hoping to avoid a function call and instead get an indexed > jump within the Python bytecode for the big function. I agree about the ord(c). However, avoiding the function call is, I think, right now, in the realms of wishful thinking. I cannot see how you could avoid a python function call - even if he bites the bullet and implements my laborious scheme, he would still have to fetch the next character to test against, inside the current state. So if it is the function calls that is slowing him down, I cannot imagine a solution using less than one per character, in which case he is screwed no matter what he does. But wait - maybe if he passes an iterator around - the equivalent of for char in input_stream... Still no good though, unless the next call to the iterator is faster than an ordinary python call. - Hendrik -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
