152 is faster that 221 ? I think not ...

[Alex Martelli]

"Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams" <ignacio at openservices.net> wrote in message
news:mailman.998996203.25913.python-list at python.org...
    ...
> It's quite simple. file.readlines() generates a true list in one go,
whereas
> xreadlines.xreadlines() creates a generator that has to be called each
time
> you want a line. Generators will never be faster than data.

...except when the data takes up enough physical memory to cause
page faults, in which case it doesn't take much for the memory-lean
generator to be faster.  In theory a similar effect could show up
on a much smaller scale with cache-faults, but I've never observed
that myself, to my knowledge.


> If you test range() versus xrange() for very large values you'll find the
same
> thing, even in the same version of Python.

Exactly -- the same thing: as long as the space consume by range
is not enough to overfill your physical memory and thus cause
page faults, range will be faster -- over that, xrange will.  To
test this, better use a machine with not too much physical RAM,
or a platform which lets you hard-constrain the amount of
physical pages devoted to a given process.


Alex