gabriel, > Now that your main problem is gone, just a few comments: > - python lists know their length, so you don't need explicit no_lines > and no_lines_2 > - list_initial.remove(temp_str) is fairly slow - it has to *scan* the > list to locate temp_str. Just keep its index instead, and use del > list_initial[index]
i will try rewriting it in that manner and comparing the times. i have no feel so far for the relative speeds of different ways of doing things, but i can see the importance of it. > - as a general sorting routine, that 'zzz....' does not look very > good, try to avoid it. yes, it's hideous even to a novice. however, i need to go to bed now, and if i hadn't got this to work before bed, i'd never get to sleep! i'll have to mull it over and come up with something more elegant. ben, i used to work for a company where we exchanged a lot of e-mails, and the titles were always 're: your e-mail', or 'project stuff', or 'file for client' or suchlike. made it kind of difficult to find anything. figured a similar principle might apply here... ; ) thanks again all, sam -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
