I was trying to check the performance of remove operation in python list through the timeit module, but it throws a ValueError.
In [4]: a = [1, 2, 3]
In [5]: timeit a.remove(2)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ValueError Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-5-7b32a87ebb7a> in <module>()
----> 1 get_ipython().magic('timeit a.remove(2)')
/home/amit/anaconda3/lib/python3.4/site-packages/IPython/core/interactiveshell.py in magic(self, arg_s)
2334 magic_name, _, magic_arg_s = arg_s.partition(' ')
2335 magic_name = magic_name.lstrip(prefilter.ESC_MAGIC)
-> 2336 return self.run_line_magic(magic_name, magic_arg_s)
2337
2338 #-------------------------------------------------------------------------
..
..
..
..
ValueError: list.remove(x): x not in list
You need to create the list each time as you have removed the 2 after the first loop:
In [2]: %%timeit
...: a = [1,2,3]
...: a.remove(2)
...:
10000000 loops, best of 3: 159 ns per loop
You can see there were 10000000
loops so by creating the list outside the timeit run you removed 2
the first loop so there is no 2 to remove on subsequent runs.
You can time the list creation and subtract that to get an approximation of the time it takes to just remove.
In [3]: timeit a = [1,2,3]
10000000 loops, best of 3: 89.8 ns per loop
You could run it once but your timings won't be near as accurate:
In [12]: a = [1,2,3]
In [13]: timeit -n 1 -r 1 a.remove(2)
1 loops, best of 1: 4.05 µs per loop
The options for timeit magic command are in the docs:
Options:
-n<N>
: execute the given statement <N>
times in a loop. If this value is not given, a fitting value is chosen.
-r<R>
: repeat the loop iteration <R>
times and take the best result. Default: 3
-t
: use time.time to measure the time, which is the default on Unix. This function measures wall time.
-c
: use time.clock to measure the time, which is the default on Windows and measures wall time. On Unix, resource.getrusage is used instead and returns the CPU user time.
-p<P>
: use a precision of <P>
digits to display the timing result. Default: 3
-q
: Quiet, do not print result.
-o
: return a TimeitResult that can be stored in a variable to inspect
the result in more details.