Sorry guys, I'm "only" able to see this (with the Python versions an end user can download):
>>> timeit.repeat("('你'*10000).replace('你', 'a')") [31.44532887821319, 31.409585124813844, 31.40705548932476] >>> timeit.repeat("('你'*10000).replace('你', 'a')") [323.56687741054805, 323.1660997337247, 325.52611455786905] >>> timeit.repeat("('\u2207'*10000).replace('\u2207', 'a')") [31.48614883771855, 31.472262820580987, 31.467803762040184] >>> timeit.repeat("('\u2207'*10000).replace('\u2207', 'a')") [320.55378064913526, 321.6890182785167, 321.4132045160866] (Will wait for the final) jmf -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list