Is there a faster way to test if two lists have the exact same elements than Pythons built in == operator? -

if have 2 lists, each 800 elements long , filled integers. there faster way compare have exact same elements (and short circuit if don't) using built in == operator?

a = [6,2,3,88,54,-486] b = [6,2,3,88,54,-486] == b  >>> true 

anything better this?

i'm curious because have giant list of lists compare.

let's not assume, run tests!

the set-up:

>>> import time >>> def timeit(l1, l2, n):         start = time.time()         in xrange(n):                 l1 == l2         end = time.time()         print "%d took %.2fs" % (n, end - start) 

two giant equal lists:

>>> hugeequal1 = [10]*30000 >>> hugeequal2 = [10]*30000 >>> timeit(hugeequal1, hugeequal2, 10000) 10000 took 3.07s 

two giant lists first element not equal:

>>> easydiff1 = [10]*30000 >>> easydiff2 = [10]*30000 >>> easydiff2[0] = 0 >>> timeit(easydiff1, easydiff2, 10000) 10000 took 0.00s >>> timeit(easydiff1, easydiff2, 1000000) 1000000 took 0.14s 

so appears built-in list equality operator indeed short-circuiting.

edit: interestingly, using array.array module doesn't make faster:

>>> import array >>> timeit(hugeequal1, hugeequal2, 1000) 1000 took 0.30s >>> timeit(array.array('l', hugeequal1), array.array('l', hugeequal2), 1000) 1000 took 1.11s 

numpy speed-up, though:

>>> import numpy >>> timeit(hugeequal1, hugeequal2, 10000) 10000 took 3.01s >>> timeit(numpy.array(hugeequal1), numpy.array(hugeequal2), 10000) 10000 took 1.11s