Python and STL efficiency

[Jeremy Sanders]

Licheng Fang wrote:

> I was using VC++.net and IDLE, respectively. I had expected C++ to be
> way faster. However, while the python code gave the result almost
> instantly, the C++ code took several seconds to run! Can somebody
> explain this to me? Or is there something wrong with my code?

It must be the debugging, the compiler or a poor STL implementation. With
gcc 4 it runs instantly on my computer (using -O2), even with 10x the
number of values.

If the problem is that C++ has to make lots of new strings, as other posters
have suggested, then you could do something like

const string foo = "What do you know?";

for (long int i=0; i<10000 ; ++i){
   a.push_back(foo);
   ...
}

as many C++ implementations use reference counting for identical strings.

Jeremy

-- 
Jeremy Sanders
http://www.jeremysanders.net/