python challenge question (string manipulation)

[Caleb Hattingh]

Felipe

I get the same results as you.  You make a good point about not
iterating when it's not needed.   I played around with your test code
and found some interesting things:

1. enumerate vs. range(len()) has very little overhead (something I
have wondered about)

In my code, making the change causes the timing to go from 27.5 usec to
24.6 usec: basically nothing.

2. I combined the two result statements into one, and your code as
written still appears consistently faster, albeit only slightly:

One-line assignment to result: 6.98; 7.18; 6.49; 7.1 (code below)
Your way via extend: 5.24; 5.26; 5.09; 5.3; 5.26; 5.21 (code further
below)

Is this because of "+" concatenation?

My one-line assignment to result:

[caleb at localhost ~]$ python2.4 -mtimeit -s "def shift(lst, n): length =
len(lst); first =(-n) % length; result = list(lst[first:]) +
list(lst[:first]); return result"
"shift('abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz',2)" 100000 loops, best of 3: 6.98
usec per loop
[caleb at localhost ~]$ python2.4 -mtimeit -s "def shift(lst, n): length =
len(lst); first =(-n) % length; result = list(lst[first:]) +
list(lst[:first]); return result"
"shift('abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz',2)"
100000 loops, best of 3: 7.18 usec per loop
[caleb at localhost ~]$ python2.4 -mtimeit -s "def shift(lst, n): length =
len(lst); first =(-n) % length; result = list(lst[first:]) +
list(lst[:first]); return result"
"shift('abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz',2)"
100000 loops, best of 3: 6.49 usec per loop
[caleb at localhost ~]$ python2.4 -mtimeit -s "def shift(lst, n): length =
len(lst); first =(-n) % length; result = list(lst[first:]) +
list(lst[:first]); return result"
"shift('abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz',2)"
100000 loops, best of 3: 7.1 usec per loop

Your code:

[caleb at localhost ~]$ python2.4 -mtimeit -s "def shift(lst, n): length =
len(lst); first =(-n) % length; result = list(lst[first:]);
result.extend(lst[:first]); return result"
"shift('abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz',2)"
100000 loops, best of 3: 5.24 usec per loop
[caleb at localhost ~]$ python2.4 -mtimeit -s "def shift(lst, n): length =
len(lst); first =(-n) % length; result = list(lst[first:]);
result.extend(lst[:first]); return result"
"shift('abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz',2)"
100000 loops, best of 3: 5.26 usec per loop
[caleb at localhost ~]$ python2.4 -mtimeit -s "def shift(lst, n): length =
len(lst); first =(-n) % length; result = list(lst[first:]);
result.extend(lst[:first]); return result"
"shift('abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz',2)"
100000 loops, best of 3: 5.09 usec per loop
[caleb at localhost ~]$ python2.4 -mtimeit -s "def shift(lst, n): length =
len(lst); first =(-n) % length; result = list(lst[first:]);
result.extend(lst[:first]); return result"
"shift('abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz',2)"
100000 loops, best of 3: 5.3 usec per loop
[caleb at localhost ~]$ python2.4 -mtimeit -s "def shift(lst, n): length =
len(lst); first =(-n) % length; result = list(lst[first:]);
result.extend(lst[:first]); return result"
"shift('abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz',2)"
100000 loops, best of 3: 5.26 usec per loop
[caleb at localhost ~]$ python2.4 -mtimeit -s "def shift(lst, n): length =
len(lst); first =(-n) % length; result = list(lst[first:]);
result.extend(lst[:first]); return result"
"shift('abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz',2)"
100000 loops, best of 3: 5.21 usec per loop

Caleb