It seems to me that str.count is awfully slow. Is there some reason
for this?
Evidence:
######## str.count time test ########
import string
import time
import array
s = string.printable * int(1e5) # 10**7 character string
a = array.array('c', s)
u = unicode(s)
RIGHT_ANSWER = s.count('a')
def main():
print 'str: ', time_call(s.count, 'a')
print 'array: ', time_call(a.count, 'a')
print 'unicode:', time_call(u.count, 'a')
def time_call(f, *a):
start = time.clock()
assert RIGHT_ANSWER == f(*a)
return time.clock()-start
if __name__ == '__main__':
main()
###### end ########
On my machine, the output is:
str: 0.29365715475
array: 0.448095498171
unicode: 0.0243757237303
If a unicode object can count characters so fast, why should an str
object be ten times slower? Just curious, really - it's still fast
enough for me (so far).
This is with Python 2.4.1 on WinXP.
Chris Perkins
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