matching strings in a large set of strings

[News123]

Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:
> On Sat, 01 May 2010 13:48:02 +0200, News123 <news1234 at free.fr> declaimed
> the following in gmane.comp.python.general:
> 
>> Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:
>>> 	That lets you do a binary search on the file. Much faster than a
>>> linear search (linear search will average out to 41.5M read operations;
>>> binary should be around 10000 reads)
>> Don't you meant 27 reads instead of 41.5 M reads?
>>
> 	Don't you mean my 10000 reads? The 41.5M is the average for the
> linear search.
>  
Indeed, this is what I meant. or phrased differently:
"about 27 reads with a binary search instead of 41.5M reads average with
a linear search."




>>>>> from math import log
>>>>> log(83e6)/log(2)
>> 26.306608000671101
> 	Probably -- it was late at night and I was working things out in my
> head...

I know about late nights.  I just wondered whether I overlooked something.