zip() function troubles

[Chris Mellon]

On 26 Jul 2007 23:35:44 -0700, Paul Rubin
<"http://phr.cx"@nospam.invalid> wrote:
> Peter Otten <__peter__ at web.de> writes:
> > When you are allocating a lot of objects without releasing them the garbage
> > collector kicks in to look for cycles. Try switching it off:
>
> I think that is the answer.  The zip took almost 2 minutes without
> turning gc off, but takes 1.25 seconds with gc off.  It turned a
> linear-time algorithm into a quadratic one.  I think something is
> broken about a design where that can happen.  Maybe Pypy will have
> a generational GC someday.
> --

Better hand in your computer, then. You're never going to find a
situation where the environment won't affect the running time of your
algorithms.

For the record, the python GC is generational. This is a case of a
default heuristic giving pathological behavior in a corner case, not
anything broken about the design of the python GC.

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