@nixme it definitely does. I wrote up a quick benchmark script to test the two methods very simply at https://gist.github.com/jasontruluck/7722888 . From the results I would say for an average use case it is negligible. At n=10 results list there is almost no discernible difference and even at 1,000,000 items is only fractions of a second. That being said, moving this out into a constant is a super easy change that can be made very easily. So even though I would consider it a micro-optimization there is no real harm in it to me, but I would like to differ to @spastorino as to whether this change is worth a PR or not.