On 10/09/2012 18:33, Oscar Benjamin wrote:
Computing the hash always requires iterating over all characters in the string so is best case O(N) where string comparison is best case (and often average case) O(1).
Yep, but you already have O(N) costs just creating the strings in the first place, so it's absorbed into that. It's only worth doing if you do many comparisons.
Also, so far as I know the hash value once computed is stored on the string object itself [1] and used for subsequent string comparisons so there's no need for you to do that in your code.
Cool, Python is very clever as always! :) Dan -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
