Compile time evaluation of dictionaries

[Gerald Britton]

Today I noticed that an expression like this:

"one:%(one)s two:%(two)s" % {"one": "is the loneliest number", "two":
"can be as bad as one"}

could be evaluated at compile time, but is not:

[snip]
Any idea why Python works this way? I see that, in 3.2, an
optimization was done for sets (See "Optimizations" at
http://docs.python.org/py3k/whatsnew/3.2.html) though I do not see
anything similar for dictionaries.

1/ because no one would ever see the difference.

The same thing could be said about sets, yet a similar optimization
was added to 3.2

2/ immutables can always be evaluated before any high CPU consuming loop

immutables could also be evaluated at compile time, which would
obviate any such concern.

3/ it would make the implementation more complex (i.e. more work for our
beloved active community) for no gain

See my reply to 1/ above.

4/ you can write C code to speed up things:
http://docs.python.org/extending/extending.html, when really needed.

How do you spell red herring?