operator.itemgetter or lambda

Question

I was curious if there was any indication of which of operator.itemgetter(0) or lambda x:x[0] is better to use, specifically in sorted()

Answer 1

The performance of itemgetter is slightly better:

>>> f1 = lambda: sorted(w, key=lambda x: x[1])
>>> f2 = lambda: sorted(w, key=itemgetter(1))
>>> timeit(f1)
21.33667682500527
>>> timeit(f2)
16.99106214600033