control structures (was "Re: Sins")

[skaller]

Skip Montanaro wrote:
> 
>     Darrell> Don't know if this if fair. But exceptions are slow when raised.
> 
> Agreed in the case of your two-branch case.  If you have a state machine
> with a bunch of states, try/except/except/... appears to perform about as
> well as if/elif/elif/.../else:

	Yeah, but this is an artefact, since Python does not
have a proper switch statement. If/elif ... is clearly
linear time .. a switch is constant time. The Knuth
construction should support constant time loop exits,
as if it had been coded with gotos instead of breaks.

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John (Max) Skaller, mailto:skaller at maxtal.com.au
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