ki lo wrote: > I have type variable which may have been set to 'D' or 'E' > > Now, which one of following statements are more efficient > > if type =='D' or type == 'E': > > or > > if re.search("D|E", type): > > Please let me know because the function is going to called 10s of > millions of times. > > Thanks > Kilo > You can answer this question yourself: Write two small test files, one using each test, and then use the timeit module on each.
I suspect the first will be much faster -- but I'd not stake any money on that without running tests first. However, ... no matter which test is faster -- will it really make much difference considering that the body of the if may be much more involved than either test? This may be an example of optimization-too-early. If profiling your final code shows that the differences in the test is a small fraction of 1% of the total execution time -- then your time would be better spent worrying about how to optimize the other portions of you code. Gary Herron -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list