why huge speed difference btwn 1.52 and 2.1?

[Robin Senior]

On 3 Jun 2001 08:07:56 -0700, aahz at panix.com (Aahz Maruch) wrote:

>In article <9f8fgs$ooo$1 at knot.queensu.ca>,
>robin senior <rsenior at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>I have a pretty simple script for processing a flat file db, running on
>>Python 2.1; I tried running it under 1.52 for kicks, and to my surprise it
>>ran almost 10 times as fast! Could someone let me know why 2.1 would be so
>>much slower?
>
>This script is so poorly formatted that I can't read it.

Sorry, I was at work and using IE to post; this should be better:

import re
import string

states = {
'ALABAMA':'AL',
'ALASKA':'AK',
'ARIZONA':'AZ',
'WISCONSIN':'WI',
'WYOMING':'WY'}

for year in range(1994, 1998):

	f = open('states/USA'+str(year)+'.TXT')
	counter = 1
	while(1):

		print str(year), counter
		counter = counter + 1

		#convert city name to allcaps (db outputs in allcaps)
		line = string.upper(f.readline().strip())

		#check for EOF
		if not line:
			break

		for state in states.keys():
			#(STATENAME) OR (STATE ABBREVIATION)
			if ( (re.search(' '+state+'( |,)', line, re.IGNORECASE)) or (re.search(' '+states[state]+'( |,)', line, re.IGNORECASE)) ):
				filename = string.replace(state, ' ', '_')
				g = open('states/'+filename+'/'+str(year)+'.TXT', "a")
				g.write(line)
				g.write("\n")
				g.close()
	f.close()