On Mon, 04 Feb 2008 17:08:02 +0000, Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch wrote: >> Surprisingly, Method 2 is a smidgen faster, by about half a second over >> 500,000 open-write-close cycles. It's not much faster, but it's >> consistent, over many tests, changing many of the parameters (e.g. the >> number of files, the number of runs per timeit test, etc.). >> >> I'm using Linux and Python 2.5. >> >> So, what's going on? Can anyone explain why the code which does more >> work takes less time? > > Can't confirm this (Linux, Python 2.5): > > Method 1: 15.380897998809814 > Method 2: 18.085366010665894
Hmmm... does your system use software RAID? Mine does. I wonder if that's a relevant factor? > I guess it's really all about the disk IO as my system monitor applet > shows that almost all of the time is spend in the kernel and very little > in user space. I wouldn't be surprised if it was something to do with the OS caching writes to disk. And saying that is really just me doing a lot of hand- waving and saying "it's magic of what we know naught". -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
