Message 181753 - Python tracker

Indeed the function call cost actually dominates:

$ ./python -m timeit -s "a = 'hundred'" "a.find('x')"
1000000 loops, best of 3: 0.206 usec per loop
$ ./python -m timeit -s "a = 'hundred'; f=a.find" "f('x')"
10000000 loops, best of 3: 0.176 usec per loop
$ ./python -m timeit -s "a = 'hundred'" "'x' in a"
10000000 loops, best of 3: 0.0431 usec per loop