Yeah, I too am pretty sure that CPython does not inline integers in the pointers. And from a quick glance at the source code I saw nothing such.
Inlining integers in pointers by shifting up and adding 1 is a quite common trick though and I have seen it in more programming language implementations than MRI. I think at least some Prolog implementation and older versions of Spidermonkey (newer versions use a similar trick with doubles).
Inlining integers in pointers by shifting up and adding 1 is a quite common trick though and I have seen it in more programming language implementations than MRI
This trick was already used in Smalltalk-80, btw. A more recent variant of this is NaN tagging, made popular by LuaJIT.
> Inlining integers in pointers by shifting up and adding 1 is a quite common trick though and I have seen it in more programming language implementations than MRI.
Yeah, I know about it, I just did not think MRI had bothered with it anymore than CPython.
