On Friday 23 August 2002 06:57 pm, Tim Wilson wrote:
> 
>  Here are the two algorithms:
> 
>  def isWord(word, wordList):    # binary search
>      wordList.sort()
>      item_insert_point = bisect.bisect(wordList, word)
>      is_present = wordList[item_insert_point-1:item_insert_point] ==
>  [word]
>      if is_present:
>          return 1
>      return 0
> 
> 
>  def isWord(word, wordList):    # regular python search
>      if word in wordList:
>          return 1
>      return 0
> 
> 
>  The results for looking for 6,175 words in a list of 45,392 words are:
> 
>  binary:  3m 25s
>  regular: 2m 58s
> 
>  I was surprised to find the binary search slower in this case. Can
>  anyone explain why?
> 

The binary search does more work.  You call list.sort(), bisect() and even do 
a list splice.  To make it truly fair passing the two functions a sorted 
list.

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