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Mon Oct 2 16:37:09 CEST 2006 · https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-October/069126.html

Kristján V. Jónsson schrieb:
> I can't see how this situation is any different from the re-use of
> low ints.  There is no fundamental law that says that ints below 100
> are more common than other, yet experience shows that  this is so,
> and so they are reused.

There are two important differences:
1. it is possible to determine whether the value is "special" in
   constant time, and also fetch the singleton value in constant
   time for ints; the same isn't possible for floats.
2. it may be that there is a loss of precision in reusing an existing
   value (although I'm not certain that this could really happen).
   For example, could it be that two values compare successful in
   ==, yet are different values? I know this can't happen for
   integers, so I feel much more comfortable with that cache.

> Rather than to view this as a programming error, why not simply
> accept that this is a recurring pattern and adjust python to be more
> efficient when faced by it?  Surely a lot of karma lies that way?

I'm worried about the penalty that this causes in terms of run-time
cost. Also, how do you chose what values to cache?

Regards,
Martin

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