Boris Borcic wrote:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>> ...Missing that, I think dict() and set() and
>> tuple() and list() look better than using {} for the empty dict and
>> {/} for the empty set and () for empty tuple (or {} for the empty dict
>> and set() for the empty set).
>
> The problem I have with them is in no way the looks, it is that they are not
> strictly equivalent as they imply dictionary lookups. Which shows in
> performance, eg
>
> >>> import timeit
> >>> timeit.Timer('[]').timeit()
> 0.22358344426456436
> >>> timeit.Timer('list()').timeit()
> 0.54574505977715049
> >>> timeit.Timer('{}').timeit()
> 0.21328632549668214
> >>> timeit.Timer('dict()').timeit()
> 0.50557906102591232
>
But this is "performance" in the abstract. It's hardly going to matter
if you use it once in the initialization of your program, but if it
occurs deep inside a quadruply-nested loop that is executed 10^12 times
it may have an impact on performance.
Before you have any code is exactly the *wrong* time to be considering
performance.
regards
Steve
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