Any suggestions?

[Jon Ribbens]

Simon Brunning <SBrunning at trisystems.co.uk> wrote:
> See <http://www.musi-cal.com/~skip/python/fastpython.html> (IIRC) for some
> hints on this.

I took a look at this, and it all looks very sensible. I decided to try
out the map-versus-loops thing to see the difference, however, and I am
completely bemused by the results. Using Python 2.0b1, I tried the
following code:

import string
import sys

def func():
  list = sys.stdin.readlines()
  newlist = []
  upper = string.upper
  append = newlist.append
  for word in list:
    append(upper(word))

func()

When run over /usr/share/dict/words, time(1) says:

real    0m5.010s
user    0m3.992s
sys     0m0.951s

The map version:

import string
import sys

list = sys.stdin.readlines()
newlist = map(string.upper, list)

takes:

real    0m5.775s
user    0m2.893s
sys     0m2.823s

The map version is *slower*! I had expected it to be considerably faster.
I am also somewhat bemused by the increase in the 'sys' time.
What's going on?

Cheers


Jon