[Tutor] First code snipet

[Alan Gauld]

"Dave Angel" <davea at ieee.org> wrote


> len() is very fast, so there's no need for a separate variable to keep 
> track of the lengths of inpile1 and inpile2.  So eliminate all refs to 
> pile1c and pile2.  In the while, just use
>    while  len(inpile1) and len(inpile2):

Or even simpler:

while inpile1 and inpile2:

An empty list is false too.

> pop(0) is slow, compared with pop(-1).  

I didn't know that, but timing seems to suggest about 50% slower.
Interesting.

Alan G.