Question

Consider the following functions:

def fact1(n):
    if n < 2:
        return 1
    else:
        return n * fact1(n-1)

def fact2(n):
    if n < 2:
        return 1
    return n * fact2(n-1)

They should be equivalent. But there’s a performance difference:

>>> T(lambda : fact1(1)).repeat(number=10000000)
[2.5754408836364746, 2.5710129737854004, 2.5678811073303223]
>>> T(lambda : fact2(1)).repeat(number=10000000)
[2.8432059288024902, 2.834425926208496, 2.8364310264587402]

The version without the else is 10% slower. This is pretty significant. Why?

Answer 1

For me, they are virtually the same speed: (Python 2.6.6 on Debian)

In [4]: %timeit fact1(1)
10000000 loops, best of 3: 151 ns per loop

In [5]: %timeit fact2(1)
10000000 loops, best of 3: 154 ns per loop

The byte code is also very similar:

In [6]: dis.dis(fact1)
  2           0 LOAD_FAST                0 (n)
              3 LOAD_CONST               1 (2)
              6 COMPARE_OP               0 (<)
              9 JUMP_IF_FALSE            5 (to 17)
             12 POP_TOP             

  3          13 LOAD_CONST               2 (1)
             16 RETURN_VALUE        
        >>   17 POP_TOP             

  5          18 LOAD_FAST                0 (n)
             21 LOAD_GLOBAL              0 (fact)
             24 LOAD_FAST                0 (n)
             27 LOAD_CONST               2 (1)
             30 BINARY_SUBTRACT     
             31 CALL_FUNCTION            1
             34 BINARY_MULTIPLY     
             35 RETURN_VALUE        
             36 LOAD_CONST               0 (None)
             39 RETURN_VALUE        

In [7]: dis.dis(fact2)
  2           0 LOAD_FAST                0 (n)
              3 LOAD_CONST               1 (2)
              6 COMPARE_OP               0 (<)
              9 JUMP_IF_FALSE            5 (to 17)
             12 POP_TOP             

  3          13 LOAD_CONST               2 (1)
             16 RETURN_VALUE        
        >>   17 POP_TOP             

  4          18 LOAD_FAST                0 (n)
             21 LOAD_GLOBAL              0 (fact)
             24 LOAD_FAST                0 (n)
             27 LOAD_CONST               2 (1)
             30 BINARY_SUBTRACT     
             31 CALL_FUNCTION            1
             34 BINARY_MULTIPLY     
             35 RETURN_VALUE        

The only difference is that the version with the else includes code to return None in case control reaches the end of the function body.