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Groups > comp.lang.python > #44089

Re: List Count

References <sridnffI6YhxuOjMnZ2dnUVZ7tSdnZ2d@brightview.co.uk> <5175377f$0$29977$c3e8da3$5496439d@news.astraweb.com> <517545F7.5090209@nowhere.org>
From Oscar Benjamin <oscar.j.benjamin@gmail.com>
Date 2013-04-22 16:14 +0100
Subject Re: List Count
Newsgroups comp.lang.python
Message-ID <mailman.927.1366644147.3114.python-list@python.org> (permalink)

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On 22 April 2013 15:15, Blind Anagram <blindanagram@nowhere.org> wrote:
> On 22/04/2013 14:13, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>> On Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:58:20 +0100, Blind Anagram wrote:
>>
>>> I would be grateful for any advice people can offer on the fastest way
>>> to count items in a sub-sequence of a large list.
>>>
>>> I have a list of boolean values that can contain many hundreds of
>>> millions of elements for which I want to count the number of True values
>>> in a sub-sequence, one from the start up to some value (say hi).
>>>
>>> I am currently using:
>>>
>>>    sieve[:hi].count(True)
>>>
>>> but I believe this may be costly because it copies a possibly large part
>>> of the sieve.
[snip]
>
> But when using a sub-sequence, I do suffer a significant reduction in
> speed for a count when compared with count on the full list.  When the
> list is small enough not to cause memory allocation issues this is about
> 30% on 100,000,000 items.  But when the list is 1,000,000,000 items, OS
> memory allocation becomes an issue and the cost on my system rises to
> over 600%.

Have you tried using numpy? I find that it reduces the memory required
to store a list of bools by a factor of 4 on my 32 bit system. I would
expect that to be a factor of 8 on a 64 bit system:

>>> import sys
>>> a = [True] * 1000000
>>> sys.getsizeof(a)
4000036
>>> import numpy
>>> a = numpy.ndarray(1000000, bool)
>>> sys.getsizeof(a)  # This does not include the data buffer
40
>>> a.nbytes
1000000

The numpy array also has the advantage that slicing does not actually
copy the data (as has already been mentioned). On this system slicing
a numpy array has a 40 byte overhead regardless of the size of the
slice.

> I agree that this is not a big issue but it seems to me a high price to
> pay for the lack of a sieve.count(value, limit), which I feel is a
> useful function (given that memoryview operations are not available for
> lists).

It would be very easy to subclass list and add this functionality in
cython if you decide that you do need a builtin method.


Oscar

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Thread

List Count Blind Anagram <blindanagram@nowhere.org> - 2013-04-22 12:58 +0100
  Re: List Count Dave Angel <davea@davea.name> - 2013-04-22 08:51 -0400
    Re: List Count Blind Anagram <blindanagram@nowhere.org> - 2013-04-22 14:03 +0100
    Re: List Count Blind Anagram <blindanagram@nowhere.org> - 2013-04-22 14:03 +0100
  Re: List Count Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2013-04-22 13:13 +0000
    Re: List Count Skip Montanaro <skip@pobox.com> - 2013-04-22 08:57 -0500
    Re: List Count Blind Anagram <blindanagram@nowhere.org> - 2013-04-22 15:15 +0100
      Re: List Count Oscar Benjamin <oscar.j.benjamin@gmail.com> - 2013-04-22 16:14 +0100
        Re: List Count Blind Anagram <blindanagram@nowhere.org> - 2013-04-22 16:50 +0100
          Re: List Count Oscar Benjamin <oscar.j.benjamin@gmail.com> - 2013-04-22 17:06 +0100
            Re: List Count Blind Anagram <blindanagram@nowhere.org> - 2013-04-22 17:38 +0100
              Re: List Count Skip Montanaro <skip@pobox.com> - 2013-04-22 12:48 -0500
                Re: List Count Blind Anagram <blindanagram@nowhere.org> - 2013-04-22 20:22 +0100
              Re: List Count Oscar Benjamin <oscar.j.benjamin@gmail.com> - 2013-04-22 21:18 +0100
                Re: List Count Blind Anagram <blindanagram@nowhere.org> - 2013-04-22 22:25 +0100
                Re: List Count Oscar Benjamin <oscar.j.benjamin@gmail.com> - 2013-04-23 00:06 +0100
                Re: List Count Blind Anagram <blindanagram@nowhere.org> - 2013-04-23 07:45 +0100
                Re: List Count Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2013-04-22 23:28 +0000
                Re: List Count Blind Anagram <blindanagram@nowhere.org> - 2013-04-23 08:00 +0100
              Re: List Count Oscar Benjamin <oscar.j.benjamin@gmail.com> - 2013-04-22 22:03 +0100
                Re: List Count Blind Anagram <blindanagram@nowhere.org> - 2013-04-22 22:32 +0100
                Re: List Count Dave Angel <davea@davea.name> - 2013-04-22 21:47 -0400
                Re: List Count Blind Anagram <blindanagram@nowhere.org> - 2013-04-23 08:02 +0100
            Re: List Count Blind Anagram <blindanagram@nowhere.org> - 2013-04-22 17:38 +0100
        Re: List Count Blind Anagram <blindanagram@nowhere.org> - 2013-04-22 16:50 +0100
      Re: List Count Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2013-04-22 23:01 +0000
        Re: List Count Blind Anagram <blindanagram@nowhere.org> - 2013-04-23 08:05 +0100
          Re: List Count Oscar Benjamin <oscar.j.benjamin@gmail.com> - 2013-04-23 12:08 +0100
            Re: List Count Blind Anagram <blindanagram@nowhere.org> - 2013-04-23 12:45 +0100
              Re: List Count Terry Jan Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2013-04-23 15:01 -0400
          Re: List Count Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2013-04-23 14:49 +0000
            Re: List Count Blind Anagram <blindanagram@nowhere.org> - 2013-04-23 17:57 +0100
              Re: List Count Oscar Benjamin <oscar.j.benjamin@gmail.com> - 2013-04-23 18:45 +0100
                Re: List Count Blind Anagram <blindanagram@nowhere.org> - 2013-04-23 19:30 +0100
                Re: List Count Oscar Benjamin <oscar.j.benjamin@gmail.com> - 2013-04-23 20:16 +0100
              Re: List Count Terry Jan Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2013-04-23 16:00 -0400
                Re: List Count Blind Anagram <blindanagram@nowhere.org> - 2013-04-23 21:41 +0100
              Re: List Count Oscar Benjamin <oscar.j.benjamin@gmail.com> - 2013-04-23 21:38 +0100
              Re: List Count Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2013-04-24 01:59 +0000
                Re: List Count Blind Anagram <blindanagram@nowhere.org> - 2013-04-24 10:01 +0100
  Re: List Count Peter Otten <__peter__@web.de> - 2013-04-22 15:22 +0200
  Re: List Count 88888 Dihedral <dihedral88888@googlemail.com> - 2013-04-22 06:36 -0700

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