On 9 Nov., 05:49, Alex_Gaynor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Nov 8, 11:36 pm, Kay Schluehr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > On 9 Nov., 05:04, Terry Reedy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > Have you written any Python code where you really wanted the old, > > > unpredictable behavior? > > > Sure: > > > if len(L1) == len(L2): > > return sorted(L1) == sorted(L2) # check whether two lists contain > > the same elements > > else: > > return False > > > It doesn't really matter here what the result of the sorts actually is > > as long as the algorithm leads to the same result for all permutations > > on L1 ( and L2 ). > > that same thing could be done with a multiset type, which would also > have better performance(O(n) vs. O(nlogn)).
I guess building a multiset is a little more expensive than just O(n). It is rather like building a dict from a list which is O(k*n) with a constant but small factor k. The comparison is of the same order. To enable the same behavior as the applied sorted() a multiset must permit unhashable elements. dicts don't do the job. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
