Improve performance of inherited mapping assignment slot calls
Nobody has claimed this yet.
- Dominant language
- Python
- Stars
- 77.2k
- Forks
- 35.9k
- PR merge metrics
- PR metrics pending
Description
Feature or enhancement
Proposal:
__setitem__ and __delitem__ share the mp_ass_subscript slot. If a Python subclass of a C mapping overrides only one of them, slot_mp_ass_subscript() is used for both operations.
For example, collections.Counter overrides __delitem__ but inherits dict.__setitem__. Assigning an item looks up the inherited wrapper_descriptor and calls it through the generic tp_call path. Since PyWrapperDescr_Type does not support vectorcall, _PyObject_MakeTpCall() and wrapperdescr_call() each create a temporary argument tuple before reaching dict's C slot.
Reproducer:
from collections import Counter
from time import perf_counter_ns
obj = Counter()
start = perf_counter_ns()
for index in range(20_000_000):
obj[0] = index
print((perf_counter_ns() - start) / 1_000_000)
On macOS 15.7.1 arm64 with a release build of main (d856402e7176e5a03c5c578f0efc1be968be3257), using two warmups and nine alternating-order samples:
main: 1402.07 ms median (1376.93–1445.12 ms)
prototype: 859.97 ms median (846.24–902.74 ms)
The prototype calls the inherited C slot directly when lookup returns the expected unbound mapping slot wrapper, and otherwise keeps the existing call path. This reduced the benchmark time by 38.66%.
The relevant call-path files are unchanged at b062727097e997bcb900e11503d3248daac903da.
Has this already been discussed elsewhere?
This is a minor feature, which does not need previous discussion elsewhere
Links to previous discussion of this feature:
No response
Linked PRs
- gh-156258
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start by reading the slot_mp_ass_subscript(), _PyObject_MakeTpCall(), and wrapperdescr_call() paths described in the issue, then inspect linked PR gh-156258. Done means the inherited mapping assignment path avoids temporary argument tuples while preserving the existing fallback, and the supplied Counter benchmark shows the reported improvement.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- python
- Domain
- performance
- Issue type
- Feature
- Difficulty
- 4/5
- Estimated time
- 3-5 days
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 35/100