Equivalent of Perl chomp?

[Mark McEahern]

Tim Peters wrote:
> Well, you're in for some fun of a kind I didn't have in mind <wink>.  Do a
> sanity check here:  what's the clock rate on your box?  How many cycles go
> by in 0.07 seconds (let alone 0.36!)?  Can you think of *any*
> non-insane way
> to implement these operations that would take so bloody long?
>
> I can't make time to explain timing subtleties today, but here's a hint:
> try swapping the order of your calls to endsWith and sliceIt, and see what
> you get then.  If you hear your disk grinding <wink>, you might want to
> contemplate the sensibility of using a 100MB string.

I admit to being perfectly clueless about these subtleties, which I'm sure
my code only demonstrated all too abundantly.  ;-)

Anyway, switching the order and trying the test again only leads to further
confusion:

  <function sliceIt at 0x100f9510> : 0.00 seconds.
  <function endsWith at 0x100f94d0> : 0.00 seconds.

And, when I switch the order back, I get the same thing:

  <function endsWith at 0x100f94d0> : 0.00 seconds.
  <function sliceIt at 0x100f9510> : 0.00 seconds.

Is it:

  1) That using time.time() for timing is brain dead?
  2) I'm using an unrealistically large string?

Tim, is your point that the performance difference in normal cases is
negligible?  If so, I would guess the further point would be to choose
endswith() because it's more legible.

I generally prefer the more legible approach and don't worry too much about
what's faster, but I thought I'd try to see whether these two different
approaches to endswith had a significant performance difference.

Cheers,

// mark