Steve Howell wrote:
On Sat, 23 Jan 2010 09:57:04 -0500, Roy Smith wrote:
So, we're right back to my statement earlier in this thread that the
docs are deficient in that they describe behavior with no hint about
cost. Given that, it should be no surprise that users make incorrect
assumptions about cost.
No hint? Looking at the below snippet of docs -- "not efficient" and
"slow" sound like pretty good hints to me.
Bringing this thread full circle, does it make sense to strike this
passage from the tutorial?:
'''
It is also possible to use a list as a queue, where the first element
added is the first element retrieved (“first-in, first-out”); however,
lists are not efficient for this purpose. While appends and pops from
the end of list are fast, doing inserts or pops from the beginning of
a list is slow (because all of the other elements have to be shifted
by one).
'''
I think points #3 and #6 possibly apply. Regarding points #2 and #4,
the tutorial is at least not overly technical or specific; it just
explains the requirement to shift other elements one by one in simple
layman's terms.
I think the paragraph is fine. Instead of waiting for the (hundreds
of?) posts wondering why making a FIFO queue from a list is so slow, and
what's wrong with Python, etc, etc, it points out up front that yes you
can, and here's why you don't want to. This does not strike me as too
much knowledge.
~Ethan~
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