Best way to handle large lists?

[Bill Williams]

I don't know enough about Python internals, but the suggested solutions 
all seem to involve scanning bigList. Can this presumably linear 
operation be avoided by using dict or similar to find all occurrences of 
smallist items in biglist and then deleting those occurrences?

Bill Williams



In article <prrUg.1662$We.477 at trndny08>,
 Chaz Ginger <cginboston at hotmail.com> wrote:

> I have a system that has a few lists that are very large (thousands or
> tens of thousands of entries) and some that are rather small. Many times
> I have to produce the difference between a large list and a small one,
> without destroying the integrity of either list. I was wondering if
> anyone has any recommendations on how to do this and keep performance
> high? Is there a better way than
> 
> [ i for i in bigList if i not in smallList ]
> 
> Thanks.
> Chaz