Python Performance: Why 'if not list' is 2x Faster Than Using len() blog.codingconfessions.com 3 points by sohkamyung 11 hours ago
zahlman 6 hours ago > But this isn’t just about coding style, one of these is ~2x faster than the other, see for yourself:FWIW, it's not necessary to start an interpreter for this test. $ py3.13 -m timeit --setup "l = []" "not l" 10000000 loops, best of 5: 20.7 nsec per loop $ py3.13 -m timeit --setup "l = []" "len(l) == 0" 10000000 loops, best of 5: 31 nsec per loop
> But this isn’t just about coding style, one of these is ~2x faster than the other, see for yourself:
FWIW, it's not necessary to start an interpreter for this test.
The explanation is paywalled.
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