What is the complexity of the in
operator in Python? Is it theta(n)?
Is it the same as the following?
def find(L, x):
for e in L:
if e == x:
return True
return False
L
is a list.
The complexity of in
depends entirely on what L
is. e in L
will become L.__contains__(e)
.
See this time complexity document for the complexity of several built-in types.
Here is the summary for in
:
The O(n) worst case for sets and dicts is very uncommon, but it can happen if __hash__
is implemented poorly. This only happens if everything in your set has the same hash value.