195
Python Performance: Why 'if not list' is 2x Faster Than Using len()
(blog.codingconfessions.com)
this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2025
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Like in most reasonable languages. Linked lists would be a terrible implementation for a list where grabbing arbitrary indices is explicitly supported.
And even then, many linked list implementations maintain an updated
sizeorlengthbecause checking that is a pretty common operation. So even if that is the implementation, it would still be fast becauselen(list)is a very common operation so they'd definitely optimize it.