html.escape makes unneeded assignments

[keithasaurus]

The existing implementation of html.escape looks like this.

def escape(s, quote=True):
    """
    Replace special characters "&", "<" and ">" to HTML-safe sequences.
    If the optional flag quote is true (the default), the quotation mark
    characters, both double quote (") and single quote (') characters are also
    translated.
    """
    s = s.replace("&", "&amp;") # Must be done first!
    s = s.replace("<", "&lt;")
    s = s.replace(">", "&gt;")
    if quote:
        s = s.replace('"', "&quot;")
        s = s.replace('\'', "&#x27;")
    return s

Refactoring this code to chain .replace method calls should result in fewer instructions and faster execution.

Linked PRs

• gh-139938: Fewer assignments in html.escape #139939

[picnixz]

The benchmarks are not really convincing, see #139939 (comment).