Re: Re: Intersection of lists of lists based on the first term
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg87533] Re: [mg87492] Re: Intersection of lists of lists based on the first term
- From: "Szabolcs HorvÃt" <szhorvat at gmail.com>
- Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 07:00:13 -0400 (EDT)
- References: <ftmu64$50i$1@smc.vnet.net> <200804110956.FAA08360@smc.vnet.net>
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 9:46 PM, Stern <nycstern at gmail.com> wrote: > Thank you, but I think I am not understanding the second bit -- what is > (isCommon[#] = True) & /@ timeStampsInCommon supposed to achieve other than > a list of True equal to the length of timeStampsInCommon in every case? > Perhaps I should have written it as Scan[(isCommon[#] = True) &, timeStampsInCommon] to emphasize that the function (isCommon[#] = True) & is only invoked for its side effects, i.e. defining new DownValues for the symbol isCommon. This will set the value of isCommon[ ... ] to True for each of the elements in timeStampsInCommon. Thus, isCommon[elem] is equivalent to MemberQ[timeStampsInCommon, elem], but it is much faster if timeStampsInCommon has many elements (because Mathematica will use a hash table for looking up elements instead of simply iterating through timeStampsInCommon). Note that isCommon[] needs to be Clear[]ed after each use (a better solution is encapsulating the whole thing into a Module where isCommon is a local symbol).
- References:
- Re: Intersection of lists of lists based on the first term
- From: Szabolcs Horvát <szhorvat@gmail.com>
- Re: Intersection of lists of lists based on the first term