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Re: Efficiency of repeatedly appending to a List

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg71159] Re: Efficiency of repeatedly appending to a List
• From: Jon Harrop <jon at ffconsultancy.com>
• Date: Thu, 9 Nov 2006 03:39:27 -0500 (EST)
• References: <eisg8h$n5a$1@smc.vnet.net>

Andrew Moylan wrote:
> This caused me to wonder about the efficiency of appending items to
> Lists in Mathematica in general. Is it an O(N) operation (i.e.,
> something akin to a realloc in C)? Or does Mathematica employ some sort
> of anticipatory memory allocation scheme to make adding new elements to
> lists usually faster than O(N)?

I think I tested this a while ago and found it to be amortised constant-time
complexity.

-- 
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy
Objective CAML for Scientists
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/ocaml_for_scientists