On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 2:13 AM, Alexander Blinne <n...@blinne.net> wrote: > def powerlist3(x,n): > return [x**i for i in xrange(n)] > > for really big n powerlist3 always takes very much time :)
I would reiterate that a really big n is a really unusual use case for a function like this, except that... I frankly can't think of *any* use case for it!! But for many many applications, the simplicity and readability of a list comp instead of a function is usually going to outweigh the performance differences. However, it doesn't surprise me that individually raising a number to successive powers is slower than iterative multiplication, assuming you can't massively optimize eg with powers of 2 and bit shifts. ChrisA -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
