What's the difference ?

[Alex Martelli]

Alex <alexandre.badez at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hye,
> 
> I was just wondering what is the difference between
> 
> >> if my_key in mydict:
> >>     ...
> 
> and
> 
> >> if mydict.has_keys(my_key):

Mis-spelled (no final s in the method name).

> >>     ...
> 
> I've search a bit in the python documentation, and the only things I
> found was that they are "equivalent".

Semantically they are, but `in' is faster, more concise, & readable.


> But in this (quiet old) sample ( "http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/
> Cookbook/Python/Recipe/59875" ), there is difference between the two
> notation.

What that example is pointing to as "wrong way" is a NON-equivalent
approach that's extremely slow:
  if my_key in mydict.keys():

The call to keys() takes time and memory to build a list of all keys,
after which the ``in'' operator, having a list as the RHS operand, is
also quite slow (O(N), vs O(1)!).  So, never use that useless and silly
call to keys() in this context!


Alex