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In order to save space and the complexity of having to maintain the consistency of data between different sources, I'm considering storing start/end indices for some substrings instead of storing the substrings themselves. The trick is that if I do so, it's possible I'll be creating slices ALL the time. Is this something to be avoided? Is the slice operator fast enough I don't need to worry? How about the new object creation/destruction overhead?
Okay, I learned my lesson. Don't optimize unless there's a real problem you're trying to fix. (Of course this doesn't mean to right needlessly bad code, but that's beside the point...) Also, test and profile before coming to stack overflow. =D Thanks everyone!
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But from the test result, the slice way even is faster than the pure loop on a range(). Why does this happen? The point is copying a list is much faster than iterating over it because the loops of the interpreter are pretty slow compared to the slicing operation optimized in C (using the same interpreter).
Python slice() FunctionThe slice() function returns a slice object. A slice object is used to specify how to slice a sequence. You can specify where to start the slicing, and where to end. You can also specify the step, which allows you to e.g. slice only every other item.
Python supports slice notation for any sequential data type like lists, strings, tuples, bytes, bytearrays, and ranges. Also, any new data structure can add its support as well.
Fast enough as opposed to what? How do you do it right now? What exactly are you storing, what exactly are you retrieving? The answer probably highly depends on this. Which brings us to ...
Measure! Don't discuss and analyze theoretically; try and measure what is the more performant way. Then decide whether the possible performance gain justifies refactoring your database.
Edit: I just ran a test measuring string slicing versus lookup in a dict keyed on (start, end) tuples. It suggests that there's not much of a difference. It's a pretty naive test, though, so take it with a pinch of salt.
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