Why are these two functions different?
In the first case the unoptimized code is LOAD 2 LOAD 3 ADD LOAD 4 MULTIPLY and in the second case it's LOAD 4 LOAD 2 LOAD 3 ADD MULTIPLY. The pattern matcher in fold_binops_on_constants() must handle the first ADD ok (replacing LOAD LOAD ADD with LOAD) and then follows on to do the same thing to MULTIPLY. In the second case by the time the ADD (now the second argument to MULTIPLY instead of the first) is turned into a constant the scanner is too far ahead to see L L M (when the "cursor" was on LOAD 4 it didn't look like a L L M yet).
Looks like this issue was patched in Python 3.3, as can be seen here.
>>> def f():... return (2+3)*4... >>> dis(f) 2 0 LOAD_CONST 5 (20) 3 RETURN_VALUE >>> def f():... return 4*(2+3)... >>> dis(f) 2 0 LOAD_CONST 5 (20) 3 RETURN_VALUE