Performance of list vs. set equality operations

Raymond Hettinger python at rcn.com
Wed Apr 7 23:14:23 EDT 2010


[Raymond Hettinger]
> > If the two collections have unequal sizes, then both ways immediately
> > return unequal.

[Steven D'Aprano]
> Perhaps I'm misinterpreting what you are saying, but I can't confirm that
> behaviour, at least not for subclasses of list:

For doubters, see list_richcompare() in
http://svn.python.org/view/python/trunk/Objects/listobject.c?revision=78522&view=markup

	if (Py_SIZE(vl) != Py_SIZE(wl) && (op == Py_EQ || op == Py_NE)) {
		/* Shortcut: if the lengths differ, the lists differ */
		PyObject *res;
		if (op == Py_EQ)
			res = Py_False;
		else
			res = Py_True;
		Py_INCREF(res);
		return res;
	}

And see set_richcompare() in
http://svn.python.org/view/python/trunk/Objects/setobject.c?revision=78886&view=markup

	case Py_EQ:
		if (PySet_GET_SIZE(v) != PySet_GET_SIZE(w))
			Py_RETURN_FALSE;
		if (v->hash != -1  &&
		    ((PySetObject *)w)->hash != -1 &&
		    v->hash != ((PySetObject *)w)->hash)
			Py_RETURN_FALSE;
		return set_issubset(v, w);


Raymond



More information about the Python-list mailing list