[Python-Dev] 2.4a2, and @decorators (original) (raw)

Michael Hudson mwh at python.net
Fri Aug 6 13:42:46 CEST 2004

Gareth McCaughan <gmccaughan at synaptics-uk.com> writes:

On Friday 2004-08-06 01:35, Greg Ewing wrote:

> >> class C(random.choice([dict, list])): > >> pass > >> > >> is my favourite example of this :-) > > > > Where is THAT monstrocity used!? > > Well, it's not, I hope :-)

Hmmm... maybe if you had some algorithm that was more efficient using either a list or a dict, depending on the input data, but in a way that makes it difficult to tell ahead of time which to use, and you want to improve the average behaviour... ... then you'd do better to find which out of (dict,list) does better on average, and always use that one. Sorry. :-)

By running the above code on a wide range of inputs? :-)

Cheers, mwh

-- To summarise the summary of the summary:- people are a problem. -- The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, Episode 12

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