Message 181755 - Python tracker
And PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() is even more slow. $ ./python -m timeit "str(b'', 'utf-8', 'strict')" 1000000 loops, best of 3: 0.554 usec per loop $ ./python -m timeit "str(object=b'', encoding='utf-8', errors='strict')" 1000000 loops, best of 3: 1.74 usec per loop