Optimisation Hints (dict processing and strings)

[OPQ]

Hi all,
I'd happy to have you share some thougts about ultimate optimisations
on those 2 topics:

(1)- adding one caractere at the end of a string (may be long)
(2)- in a dict mapping a key to a list of int, remove every entrie
where the list of int have of length < 2
So far, my attempts are
for (1):

longone=longone + char # where len(char)== 1

I known that string concatenation is time consuming, but a small test
on timeit seems to show that packing and creating an array for those 2
elements is equally time consuming
for (2):
for k in hash.keys()[:]: # Note : Their may be a lot of keys here
if len(hash[k])<2:
del hash[k]
Here again, I think the hash.keys duplication can be time *and* memory
consuming. But still better than (I suppose - no time it yet)
hash=dict([(k,v) for (k,v) in hash if len(v)>1])
I know that I can experiment further with timeit, but still would like
to hear from your experience.

Thanks !

--OPQ

[Peter Hansen]

OPQ wrote:

I'd happy to have you share some thougts about ultimate optimisations
on those 2 topics:

(1)- adding one caractere at the end of a string (may be long)

longone=longone + char # where len(char)== 1

I known that string concatenation is time consuming, but a small test
on timeit seems to show that packing and creating an array for those 2
elements is equally time consuming

You've misunderstood the comments about this area.
String concatenation is *not* "time consuming".
*Repeated* concatenations *will become very time
consuming*, along an exponential curve. That's
what the discussions about O(n^2) are referring
to. A single string concatenation is definitely
going to be faster than any amount of converting
to other data structures and such.

Basically, to concatenate two strings, Python
simply adds their sizes together and allocates
a new memory area of sufficient size, then copies
the bytes from each string to the new area. Not
much overhead there, for a single concatenation.

The problem comes when you try to scale this.
At some point, the overhead of allocating and
deallocating all the intermediate strings becomes
much larger than other approaches would take.
For example, by building a list with references
to all the strings, then using join(), you save
on the intermediate steps. Join performs the
length-summation and memory allocation steps
only once, and copies each individual string into
the final area only once. Much faster, provided
the overhead of growing a list as you append()
string references is small enough. And it is,
since growing a list is not O(n^2) in Python
(though I don't recall exactly what it is).

The key with this stuff is to realize that neither
approach is inherently faster: it depends on how
much concatenation you are doing. It could be
that concatenating up to four strings is faster
than using the append/join technique, or it could
be that it's faster up to twenty strings.

When you're not talking hundreds of operations,
and when you're not talking about actual *measured*
performance problems (in other words, when we would
call it "premature optimization"), focus on the
readability of the code and on keeping it simple
and clean. Worry about the correctness of the code,
and leave optimization worries till later. (But
understand this "big O" stuff well enough to
be able to avoid the real problem areas, when
possible.)

-Peter

[Daniel Dittmar]

OPQ wrote:

for (1):

longone=longone + char # where len(char)== 1

I known that string concatenation is time consuming, but a small test
on timeit seems to show that packing and creating an array for those 2
elements is equally time consuming

- use cStringIO instead
- or append all chars to a list and do "".join (listvar)

for (2):
for k in hash.keys()[:]: # Note : Their may be a lot of keys here
if len(hash[k])<2:
del hash[k]
Here again, I think the hash.keys duplication can be time *and* memory
consuming. But still better than (I suppose - no time it yet)
hash=dict([(k,v) for (k,v) in hash if len(v)>1])

- Try if it isn't faster to iterate using items instead of iterating
over keys
- use the dict.iter* methods to prevent building a list in memory. You
shouldn't use these values directly to delete the entry as this could
break the iterator:

for key in [k for (k, v) in hash.iteritems () if len (v) < 2]:
del hash (key)

This of course builds a list of keys to delete, which could also be large.

- also: hash.keys()[:] is not necessary, hash.keys () is already a copy

Daniel

[John Machin]

OPQ wrote:

(2)- in a dict mapping a key to a list of int, remove every entrie
where the list of int have of length < 2
So far, my attempts are
for (2):
for k in hash.keys()[:]: # Note : Their may be a lot of keys here
if len(hash[k])<2:
del hash[k]
Here again, I think the hash.keys duplication can be time *and* memory consuming. But still better than (I suppose - no time it yet)
hash=dict([(k,v) for (k,v) in hash if len(v)>1])

Firstly, don't call it "hash"; you are shadowing a built-in function --
as well as giving clues to your background :-)

Secondly, you are *triplicating* the keys. Mapping.keys() returns a
list. You can safely iterate over that to change the contents of the
mapping. Read the docs: "a.keys() a copy of a's list of keys".
Mapping.keys()[:] gives you a copy of the copy.

Cheers,
John

[OPQ]

#For the record, I'm not on premature optimisation anymore.
#The code is working. I just want to save hours of computing, without
relying to much on C extensions.
#Nevertheless, thansk for tips, clarifications and explanations.

>longone=longone + char # where len(char)== 1
I known that string concatenation is time consuming, but a small test
on timeit seems to show that packing and creating an array for those 2
elements is equally time consuming

- use cStringIO instead
- or append all chars to a list and do "".join (listvar)

Yes, but as Peter said using a list won't be useful for a single
operation.
And I have to compute the string at each step of the loop. I think
listvar won't be useful.
But I'm going to try cStringIO.

for (2):
for k in hash.keys()[:]: # Note : Their may be a lot of keys here
if len(hash[k])<2:
del hash[k]
- Try if it isn't faster to iterate using items instead of iterating
over keys

items are huge lists of numbers. keys are simple small strings. And
even if it is faster, how can I find the key back, in order to delete
it ?
for v in hashh.items():
if len(v)<2:
del ???????
- use the dict.iter* methods to prevent building a list in memory. You
shouldn't use these values directly to delete the entry as this could
break the iterator:

for key in [k for (k, v) in hash.iteritems () if len (v) < 2]:
del hash (key)

I gonna try, but think that would be overkill: a whole list has to be
computed !
Maybe whith genexps ...... for key in (k for (k,v) in hash.iteritems()
if len(v)<2)

This of course builds a list of keys to delete, which could also be large.

Yes. Which tell me to use genexps.
- also: hash.keys()[:] is not necessary, hash.keys () is already a copy

Yes I got that one, but too late !

Thanks !

[MyHaz]

I posted a question about string concatination just last week. There is
plenty of discussion on it, if you just search the group.

[Bengt Richter]

On 29 Mar 2005 23:41:15 -0800, po***@hotmail.com (OPQ) wrote:
[...]

> for k in hash.keys()[:]: # Note : Their may be a lot of keys here
> if len(hash[k])<2:
> del hash[k]
- Try if it isn't faster to iterate using items instead of iterating
over keys

items are huge lists of numbers. keys are simple small strings. And
even if it is faster, how can I find the key back, in order to delete
it ?

items() returns a list of (k,v) tuples, so you can unpack them
into the for assignment target, e.g.,

for k,v in hashh.items():
if len(v)<2:
del hassh[k]
for v in hashh.items():
if len(v)<2:
del ???????

but to avoid a big temporary items() list, perhaps (untested)

for k in [k for k,v in hashh.iteritems() if len(v)<2]:
del hassh[k]

UIAM that should build a temporary safe list
only of the keys selected for deletion.

Regards,
Bengt Richter

[Daniel Dittmar]

OPQ wrote:

- Try if it isn't faster to iterate using items instead of iterating
over keys

items are huge lists of numbers. keys are simple small strings. And
even if it is faster, how can I find the key back, in order to delete
it ?
for v in hashh.items():
if len(v)<2:
del ???????

To elaborate on the memory requirements of .keys () vs. items ():

..keys () creates a new list of n objects. The objects are additional
references to the existing keys.

..items () creates also a new list of n objects. These objects are tuples
of references, one to the key and one to the value. Only references
are used so it doesn't matter how large the value actually is. Whether
the tuples are created for the items () call or already exist depends on
the implementation of the dictionary. Trying to infer this by using
sys.getrefcount got me inconclusive results.
I gonna try, but think that would be overkill: a whole list has to be
computed !
Maybe whith genexps ...... for key in (k for (k,v) in hash.iteritems()
if len(v)<2)

Using only iterators has problems:

for k,v in hash.iteritems ():
if len (v) < 2:
del hash [k]

You are changing hash while you iterate over it, this very often breaks
the iterator.

If you are memory bound, maybe a dabase like SQLite is really the way to
go. Or you could write the keys to a remporary file in the loop and then
write a second loop that reads the keys and deletes them from hash.

Daniel

[Kent Johnson]

OPQ wrote:

for (2):
for k in hash.keys()[:]: # Note : Their may be a lot of keys here
if len(hash[k])<2:
del hash[k]

- use the dict.iter* methods to prevent building a list in memory. You
shouldn't use these values directly to delete the entry as this could
break the iterator:

for key in [k for (k, v) in hash.iteritems () if len (v) < 2]:
del hash (key)

I gonna try, but think that would be overkill: a whole list has to be
computed !

Yes, but it is smaller than the list returned by hash.keys(), so it should be a win over what you
were doing originally. Plus it avoids a lookup (hash[k]) which may improve the speed also.

BTW I have long assumed that iterating key, value pairs of a dict using iteritems() is faster than
iterating with keys() followed by a lookup, since the former method should be able to avoid actually
hashing the key and looking it up.

I finally wrote a test, and my assumption seems to be correct; using iteritems() is about 1/3 faster
for simple keys.

Here is a simple test:

##

d = dict((i, i) for i in range(10000))

def withItems(d):
for k,v in d.iteritems():
pass

def withKeys(d):
for k in d:
d[k]

from timeit import Timer

for fn in [withItems, withKeys]:
name = fn.__name__
timer = Timer('%s(d)' % name, 'from __main__ import d, %s' % name)
print name, timer.timeit(1000)

##

I get
withItems 0.980311184801
withKeys 1.37672944466

Kent