On Oct 17, 10:03 pm, Debajit Adhikary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > How does "a.extend(b)" compare with "a += b" when it comes to > performance? Does a + b create a completely new list that it assigns > back to a? If so, a.extend(b) would seem to be faster. How could I > verify things like these?
Use a += b rather than a.extend(b): I'm not sure what I was thinking. Anyway, look at 'timeit' to see how to measure things like this, but my advice would be not to worry and to write the most readable code - and only optimise if your code's runnign too slowly. To answer your question though: a += b is *not* the same as a = a + b. The latter would create a new list and assign it to a, whereas a += b updates a in-place. -- Paul Hankin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
