Jan,
As an academic discussion, yes, many enhancements only pay off when things are
larger.
And for most purposes, I/O is so much slower that it makes little difference.
But on a multi-processing machine, extra CPU may impact how much else the
machine can do at the same time.
Here is an example of what I meant. Given exactly the current output, what is
the shorter program you can use to cheat and produce an answer.
Recall the original output has a length of 169:
a = """1
0
2
0
1
3
0
1
2
4
0
1
2
3
5
0
1
2
3
4
6
0
1
2
3
4
5
"""
len(a)
Now if you had already used a compression algorithm on it, you would get this:
import zlib
a = zlib.compress(a.encode("ascii"))
len(a)
Now a has a length of 53!
It now looks like this:
b'x\x9c3\xe4R\x00\x03\x03.#8\x0bB\x1br\x19c\x88(\x18q\x99p!q\xc1\x00\xa6\xd1\x98\xcb\x14S\x03\x9a\n\x13.3\x82j
\xb4\t\x94\x86\x99\t\x00\xdc\x87\x14\xb7'
So the shorter cheat program might now be:
>>> print(zlib.decompress(b'x\x9c3\xe4R\x00\x03\x03.#8\x0bB\x1br\x19c\x88(\x18q\x99p!q\xc1\x00\xa6\xd1\x98\xcb\x14S\x03\x9a\n\x13.3\x82j
>>> \xb4\t\x94\x86\x99\t\x00\xdc\x87\x14\xb7').decode("ASCII"))
1
0
2
0
1
3
0
1
2
4
0
1
2
3
5
0
1
2
3
4
6
0
1
2
3
4
5
Of course, the above has overhead as you have a line to import the library as
well as the darn function names but for larger amounts of text, those stay
fixed.
I note again this won't fool humans but some on-line courses that just take
your program and run it and only compare the output will be fooled.
-----Original Message-----
From: jan <rtm4...@googlemail.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 24, 2021 3:01 AM
To: Avi Gross <avigr...@verizon.net>
Cc: python-list@python.org
Subject: Re: Optimizing Small Python Code
If I'm not mistaken, the original output is O(n^2) in quantity of chars, and as
output time is proportional to the length of the output, that makes the output
time also O(n^2) here too.
So I guess this only looks like it's reduced to linear because the output here
is very small. For large n it would become obvious.
jan
On 24/06/2021, Avi Gross via Python-list <python-list@python.org> wrote:
> Yes, I agree that if you do not need to show your work to a human,
> then the problem specified could be solved beforeand and a simple
> print statement would suffice.
>
> Ideally you want to make a problem harder such as by specifying an N
> that varies then testing it with an arbitrary N.
>
> But I suggest the item below is not minimal. You can store the
> printout more compactly as the only symbols out put are tabs, newlines
> and seven digits.
> If your language supported some function that expanded a binary string
> that used say 4 bytes per symbol so it could be printed, or accepted a
> compressed form of the string and uncompressed it, you might have code
> like:
>
> print(unzip("n*n&&S!~se"))
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Python-list
> <python-list-bounces+avigross=verizon....@python.org> On Behalf Of
> Michael F. Stemper
> Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2021 10:23 AM
> To: python-list@python.org
> Subject: Re: Optimizing Small Python Code
>
> On 23/06/2021 08.17, Stefan Ram wrote:
>> "Avi Gross" <avigr...@verizon.net> writes:
>>> This can be made a one-liner too! LOL!
>>
>> print( '1\n 0\n2\n 0\n 1\n3\n 0\n 1\n
>> 2\n4\n
> 0\n 1\n 2\n 3\n5\n 0\n 1\n 2\n 3\n
> 4\n6\n 0\n 1\n 2\n 3\n 4\n 5\n' )
>
> Unless I'm figuring ot wrong, you just took it from O(n^2) to O(1).
> That deserves a Turing award or something.
>
> --
> Michael F. Stemper
> You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him talk like Mr. Ed
> by rubbing peanut butter on his gums.
> --
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>
> --
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>
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