fast list lookup

[Alex Martelli]

Klaus Neuner <klaus_neuner82 at yahoo.de> wrote:

> what is the fastest way to determine whether list l (with
> len(l)>30000) contains a certain element?

"if thecertainelement in l:"

is the fastest way unless there are properties of l which you're not
telling us about, or unless what you need is not just to determine
whether l contains a certain element but rather something different
(such as doing the same determination for several elements on an
unchanging l).


Alex