On Fri, 03 Jul 2009 20:08:20 +1200, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote: > In message <mailman.2446.1246491262.8015.python-l...@python.org>, João > Valverde wrote: > >> Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote: [...] >>> Want sorted order? >>> >>> sorted(tuple(the_set)) >>> >>> What could be simpler? >> >> Try putting that inside a loop with thousands of iterations and you'll >> see what the problem is. > > You could apply the same argument to anything. E.g. why create a tree > structure with a million elements? Try putting that inside a loop with > thousands of iterations and you'll see what the problem is.
The difference is, it's vanishingly rare to want to build a tree with millions of elements thousands of times over and over again, but it is not unreasonable to want to access sorted data thousands of times. Needing to re-sort it over and over and over again is wasteful, slow and stupid. Binary trees were invented, in part, specifically to solve this use-case. -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
