I sometimes use timeit to see if it's better to check if something needs doing, or to just do it anyway. This result was surprising:
setup = 'd1 = {"a":0, "b":0}; d2 = {"a":0, "b":1}' Timer('d1.update(d2)', setup).timeit() 2.6499271392822266 Timer('if d1 != d2: d1.update(d2)', setup).timeit() 1.0235211849212646 In other words, in this case it's substantially quicker to check for something and then proceed, than it is to just proceed! I'm curious about the explanation. Regards, John -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list