You are right about those lines in particular; 'dubious' as you say.
Though, the point overall was that the general implementation was noticeably
faster (regardless of those smaller changes).

However, I do think that the single check for len == 0 saves time
particularly
from do_xstrip where we call _getbuffer().

I see. I must have been trigger happy.

> > diff -r b5ccdf7c032a Python/bltinmodule.c
> > Binary file Python/bltinmodule.c has changed
>
> Uh, what's this? bltinmodule.c shouldn't be considered a binary file.
> It probably means you added a NUL byte in it by mistake.
>
> I didn't touch that file at all. I'm not sure what that is. :-P

> Looking at just how similar these 3 implementations are I feel that we
> > could also unify/generalize them into one generic helper implementation
> > and leave the object marshaling up to the type specific methods.
>
> You could put it in Objects/stringlib.
>

I figured. I will when I am able to get to it.

- John