Vitor Bosshard wrote: > 2009/10/23 Willi Richert <w.rich...@gmx.net>: >> Hi, >> >> recently I wrote an algorithm, in which very often I had to get an arbitrary >> element from a set without removing it. >> >> Three possibilities came to mind: >> >> 1. >> x = some_set.pop() >> some_set.add(x) >> >> 2. >> for x in some_set: >> break >> >> 3. >> x = iter(some_set).next() >> >> >> Of course, the third should be the fastest. It nevertheless goes through all >> the iterator creation stuff, which costs some time. I wondered, why the >> builtin >> set does not provide a more direct and efficient way for retrieving some >> element >> without removing it. Is there any reason for this? >> >> I imagine something like >> >> x = some_set.get() >> > > > I see this as being useful for frozensets as well, where you can't get > an arbitrary element easily due to the obvious lack of .pop(). I ran > into this recently, when I had a frozenset that I knew had 1 element > (it was the difference between 2 other sets), but couldn't get to that > element easily (get the pun?)
So in my testing (2) was actually the fastest. I assumed because .next() was a function call overhead, while: for x in some_set: break Was evaluated inline. It probably still has to call PyObject_GetIter, however it doesn't have to create a stack frame for it. This is what "timeit" tells me. All runs are of the form: python -m timeit -s "s = set([10])" ... 0.101us "for x in s: break; x" 0.130us "for x in s: pass; x" 0.234us -s "n = next; i = iter" "x = n(i(s)); x" 0.248us "x = next(iter(s)); x" 0.341us "x = iter(s).next(); x" So 'for x in s: break' is about 2x faster than next(iter(s)) and 3x faster than (iter(s).next()). I was pretty surprised that it was 30% faster than "for x in s: pass". I assume it has something to do with a potential "else:" statement? Note that all of these are significantly < 1us. So this only matters if it is something you are doing often. I don't know your specific timings, but I would guess that: for x in s: break Is actually going to be faster than your s.get() Primarily because s.get() requires an attribute lookup. I would think your version might be faster for: stat2 = "g = s.get; for i in xrange(100): g()" However, that is still a function call, which may be treated differently by the interpreter than the for:break loop. I certainly suggest you try it and compare. John =:-> _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
