Steven D'Aprano, 28.07.2013 22:51: > Calling Counter ends up calling essentially this code: > > for elem in iterable: > self[elem] = self.get(elem, 0) + 1 > > (although micro-optimized), where "iterable" is your data (lines). > Calling the get method has higher overhead than dict[key], that will also > contribute.
It comes with a C accelerator (at least in Py3.4dev), but it seems like that stumbles a bit over its own feet. The accelerator function special cases the (exact) dict type, but the Counter class is a subtype of dict and thus takes the generic path, which makes it benefit a bit less than possible. Look for _count_elements() in http://hg.python.org/cpython/file/tip/Modules/_collectionsmodule.c Nevertheless, even the generic C code path looks fast enough in general. I think the problem is just that the OP used Python 2.7, which doesn't have this accelerator function. Stefan -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
