Give meaning to the oparg for BUILD_MAP: estimated size of the dictionary. Allows dictionaries to be pre-sized (upto 255 elements) saving time lost to re-sizes with their attendant mallocs and re-insertions. Has zero effect on small dictionaries (5 elements or fewer), a slight benefit for dicts upto 22 elements (because they had to resize once anyway), and more benefit for dicts upto 255 elements (saving multiple resizes during the build-up and reducing the number of collisions on the first insertions). Beyond 255 elements, there is no addional benefit.

--- a/Lib/opcode.py	Tue Dec 18 20:10:42 2007 +0000
+++ b/Lib/opcode.py	Tue Dec 18 21:24:09 2007 +0000
@@ -139,7 +139,7 @@
 name_op('LOAD_NAME', 101)       # Index in name list
 def_op('BUILD_TUPLE', 102)      # Number of tuple items
 def_op('BUILD_LIST', 103)       # Number of list items
-def_op('BUILD_MAP', 104)        # Always zero for now
+def_op('BUILD_MAP', 104)        # Number of dict entries (upto 255)
 name_op('LOAD_ATTR', 105)       # Index in name list
 def_op('COMPARE_OP', 106)       # Comparison operator
 hascompare.append(106)