[Pyrex] Pyrex optimization

[Paul Prescod]

I've done some experiments with getting Pyrex to generate fast code 
(comparable with hand-written C code) and written up some techniques:

http://www.prescod.net/python/pyrexopt/optimization.html

The basic conclusions are

  a) your Pyrex code can live on a spectrum from very readable to 
very-fast but it is hard to get 100% of both.

  b) Pyrex should be smarter about using PySequence_GetItem and 
PyList_GETITEM etc. when they are appropriate rather than always 
PyObject_GetItem. (and of course similar issues for SetItem and 
DelItem). At least some of this can be pretty easily done merely by 
adding "sequence" and "list" types along with the basic "object" type.
Alternate strategies could be type inferencing, type hinting, runtime 
specialization, etc. Whatever: the function calls need to be type specific.


  Paul Prescod