John, I'm adding a +0 to cancel out Raymond's -1. I've read your
motivation and, like you, hope/expect that benchmarking will show this
has no real impact.  But I need data to decide.  Once there are
benchmark results I'll revise my view.  A good place to start looking
for benchmarks might be the Performance section of
http://code.google.com/p/unladen-swallow/wiki/ProjectPlan .