iterating in reverse

[Chad Netzer]

On Friday 17 January 2003 00:54, Jonathan P. wrote:

> The main thing that bugs me is that I have to choose between
> storing 2 copies of the same data (one reversed, the other not)
> or I have to do a couple of reverse()s each time (to undo the
> transformation) I need to access the list in reverse.  The former
> is wasteful of space, the latter of performance.

Although, as Paul Rubin pointed out, even though you may iterate in one 
direction at a time, you can access in either order.  Rather than 
iterating directly over the contents, you iterate over a list of 
indices (using range), and you can use the indices to count from the 
from or the back.

So, that may really be the best option in these circumstances.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~
seq = "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog"
for i in xrange( len( seq ) ):
   forward_iter = seq[i]
   backward_iter = seq[-(i + 1)]
   pass # do whatever you need
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In this case, you don't copy or generate any new lists at all, so it 
should be quite quick.

-- 
Bay Area Python Interest Group - http://www.baypiggies.net/

Chad Netzer