code for Computer Language Shootout

[Jacob Lee]

There are a bunch of new tests up at shootout.alioth.debian.org for which
Python does not yet have code. I've taken a crack at one of them, a task
to print the reverse complement of a gene transcription. Since there are a
lot of minds on this newsgroup that are much better at optimization than
I, I'm posting the code I came up with to see if anyone sees any
opportunities for substantial improvement. Without further ado:

table = string.maketrans('ACBDGHK\nMNSRUTWVY', 'TGVHCDM\nKNSYAAWBR')

def show(s):
    i = 0
    for char in s.upper().translate(table)[::-1]:
        if i == 60:
            print
            i = 0
        sys.stdout.write(char)
        i += 1
    print

def main():
    seq = ''
    for line in sys.stdin:
        if line[0] == '>' or line[0] == ';':
            if seq != '':
                show(seq)
                seq = ''
            print line,
        else:
            seq += line[:-1]
    show(seq)

main()


Making seq into a list instead of a string (and using .extend instead of
the + operator) didn't give any speed improvements. Neither did using a
dictionary instead of the translate function, or using reversed() instead
of s[::-1]. The latter surprised me, since I would have guessed using an
iterator to be more efficient. Since the shootout also tests memory usage,
should I be using reversed for that reason? Does anyone have any other
ideas to optimize this code?

By the way - is there a good way to find out the maximum memory a program
used (in the manner of the "time" command)? Other than downloading and
running the shootout benchmark scripts, of course.

-- 
Jacob Lee
jelee2 at uiuc.edu | www.nearestneighbor.net