Fredrik Lundh wrote: > Dustan wrote: > > > I have a program that uses up a lot of CPU and want to make it is > > efficient as possible with what I have to work with it. So which of the > > following would be more efficient, knowing that l is a list and size is > > a number? > > > > l=l[:size] > > del l[size:] > > since you have the program, it shouldn't that hard to test the > two alternatives, should it ? > > (in theory, del should be faster in most cases, since it avoids > creating another object. but the only way to tell for sure is > to try it out). > > > If it makes a difference, everything in the list is mutable. > > the only difference between mutable and immutable objects in Python > is that mutable objects have methods that let you modify the object > contents, while immutable objects don't have such methods.
And it can be referenced by different variables. What I was saying was that the contents weren't being copied over; it was only the list that was being copied in the first statement. > > </F> -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
