Hi. Lastly I wrote a simple generator of permutations in python (implementation of "plain changes" algorithm described by Knuth in "The Art... 4"). I was curious about the differences in execution time of it between python2 and python3. Here is my function:

def perms(s): s = tuple(s) N = len(s) if N <= 1: yield s[:] raise StopIteration() for x in perms(s[1:]): for i in range(0,N): yield x[:i] + (s[0],) + x[i:]

I tested both using timeit module.

My tests: $ echo "python2.6:" && ./testing.py && echo "python3:" && ./testing3.py python2.6: args time[ms] 1 0.003811 2 0.008268 3 0.015907 4 0.042646 5 0.166755 6 0.908796 7 6.117996 8 48.346996 9 433.928967 10 4379.904032 python3: args time[ms] 1 0.00246778964996 2 0.00656183719635 3 0.01419159912 4 0.0406293644678 5 0.165960511097 6 0.923101452814 7 6.24257639835 8 53.0099868774 9 454.540967941 10 4585.83498001

As you can see, for number of arguments less than 6, python 3 is faster, but then roles are reversed and python2.6 does better. As I am a novice in python programming, I wonder why is that so? Or maybe my script is more optimized for python2?

Thank you in advance for kind answer :)