Removing duplicates from a list

[Will McGugan]

Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> 
> 
> Don't imagine, measure.
> 
> Resist the temptation to guess. Write some test functions and time the two
> different methods. But first test that the functions do what you expect:
> there is no point having a blindingly fast bug.

Thats is absolutely correct. Although I think you do sometimes have to 
guess. Otherwise you would write multiple versions of every line of code.

> 
> 
> But count passes through the list in C and is also very fast. Is that
> faster or slower than the hashing code used by sets? I don't know, and
> I'll bet you don't either.


Sure. But if I'm not currently optimizing I would go for the method with 
the best behaviour, which usualy means hashing rather than searching. 
Since even if it is actualy slower - its not likely to be _very_ slow.


Will McGugan
-- 
http://www.willmcgugan.com
"".join({'*':'@','^':'.'}.get(c,0) or chr(97+(ord(c)-84)%26) for c in 
"jvyy*jvyyzpthtna^pbz")