Paul Moore wrote:
It's a long time ago, and back prior to PEP 302, but I believe that the original version of the zipimport PEP (PEP 273 by Jim Ahlstrom) included some timings based on the original patch. While this did show slowdowns with compressed zip files, it showed distinct speedups with *un*compressed zip files. IIRC, this was explained as because a zipfile directory scan is faster than multiple filesystem stats.
This all is convincing *if* the files you are looking for actually are located in the zipfile - then reading from the zipfile might indeed be faster than directly reading from disk. If, however, the files are *not* in the zipfile, it's not so clear anymore what the consequences are. On the downside, you have the need to read the entire zip table-of-content (TOC), and you have the need to perform a dictionary lookup. On the up-side, you avoid a system call. Regards, Martin