PyObject_LengthHint is in the critical patch for many operations (such as list constructor, or list.extend), but it's quite unoptimized.

Here is a patch. Micro-benchmark:

$ ./python -m timeit -s "l=[]; it=(x for x in ())" "l.extend(it)"
-> before: 0.449 usec per loop
-> after: 0.179 usec per loop

What if use _PyObject_HasLen?

if (_PyObject_HasLen(o)) {
    res = PyObject_Length(o);
    ...
}

hint = _PyObject_LookupSpecial(o, &PyId___length_hint__);
...

Here is a patch which uses _PyObject_HasLen. It has same performance but is much simpler.

> Here is a patch which uses _PyObject_HasLen. It has same performance
> but is much simpler.

Thanks!

> Here is a patch which uses _PyObject_HasLen. It has same performance
> but is much simpler.

+1 This will be a nice improvement.

New changeset bffb49efc383 by Serhiy Storchaka in branch 'default':
Issue #19369: Optimized the usage of __length_hint__().
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/bffb49efc383