with PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs, which is 30% faster.

Struct now unpacks to PY_LONG_LONG directly when possible, also include #ifdef'ed out code that will return int instead of long when in bounds (not active since it's an API and doc change)

related tests are now about 10x faster.

new string is over max Py_ssize_t.  I have no way to test it on my
box or any box I have access to.  At least it doesn't break anything.

Now using PyInt_FromSsize_t.

for the related stringbench tests.

made a copy of the string using PyString_FromStringAndSize(s, n) and modify
the copied string in-place.  However, 1 (and 0) character strings are shared
from a cache.  This cause "A".replace("A", "a") to change the cached version
of "A" -- used by everyone.

Now may the copy with NULL as the string and do the memcpy manually.  I've
added regression tests to check if this happens in the future.  Perhaps
there should be a PyString_Copy for this case?

both mystrtoul.c and longobject.c.  Share the table instead.  Also
cut its size by 64 entries (they had been used for an inscrutable
trick originally, but the code no longer tries to use that trick).

now about 3x faster on my machine, for the replace tests from string-
bench.

versions if they're not defined.

Added a new macro, Py_IS_FINITE(X).  On windows there is an intrinsic for this and it is more efficient than to use !Py_IS_INFINITE(X) && !Py_IS_NAN(X).  No change on other platforms

strings too... (thanks to georg brandl for spotting the exact problem
faster than anyone else)

(the unicode versions of these are still 2x faster on windows,
though...)

based on work by Andrew Dalke, with tweaks by yours truly.

statement raise SyntaxError, and add testcase.

(SF patch #1281291, contributed by Rory Yorke)

``long(str, base)`` is now up to 6x faster for non-power-of-2 bases.  The
largest speedup is for inputs with about 1000 decimal digits.  Conversion
from non-power-of-2 bases remains quadratic-time in the number of input
digits (it was and remains linear-time for bases 2, 4, 8, 16 and 32).

Speedups at various lengths for decimal inputs, comparing 2.4.3 with
current trunk.  Note that it's actually a bit slower for 1-digit strings:

  len  speedup
 ----  -------
   1     -4.5%
   2      4.6%
   3      8.3%
   4     12.7%
   5     16.9%
   6     28.6%
   7     35.5%
   8     44.3%
   9     46.6%
  10     55.3%
  11     65.7%
  12     77.7%
  13     73.4%
  14     75.3%
  15     85.2%
  16    103.0%
  17     95.1%
  18    112.8%
  19    117.9%
  20    128.3%
  30    174.5%
  40    209.3%
  50    236.3%
  60    254.3%
  70    262.9%
  80    295.8%
  90    297.3%
 100    324.5%
 200    374.6%
 300    403.1%
 400    391.1%
 500    388.7%
 600    440.6%
 700    468.7%
 800    498.0%
 900    507.2%
1000    501.2%
2000    450.2%
3000    463.2%
4000    452.5%
5000    440.6%
6000    439.6%
7000    424.8%
8000    418.1%
9000    417.7%

be make to pass now for unicode if it passes for str, or
vice versa.

the Need For Speed sprint coding.  Includes commented out overflow tests
which will be uncommented once the code is fixed.

This test will break the 8-bit string tests because
    "".replace("", "A") == "" when it should == "A"

We have a fix for it, which should be added tomorrow.

constant-length changes; use fastsearch to locate the first match.

results in a 2.5x speedup on the stringbench count tests, and a 20x (!)
speedup on the stringbench search/find/contains test, compared to 2.5a2.

for more on the algorithm, see:

    http://effbot.org/zone/stringlib.htm

if you get weird results, you can disable the new algoritm by undefining
USE_FAST in Objects/unicodeobject.c.

enjoy /F