What is the fastest (to access) struct-like object in Python?

Question

I\'m optimizing some code whose main bottleneck is running through and accessing a very large list of struct-like objects. Currently I\'m using namedtuples, for readability

Answer 1

This question is fairly old (internet-time), so I thought I'd try duplicating your test today, both with regular CPython (2.7.6), and with pypy (2.2.1) and see how the various methods compared. (I also added in an indexed lookup for the named tuple.)

This is a bit of a micro-benchmark, so YMMV, but pypy seemed to speed up named tuple access by a factor of 30 vs CPython (whereas dictionary access was only sped up by a factor of 3).

from collections import namedtuple

STest = namedtuple("TEST", "a b c")
a = STest(a=1,b=2,c=3)

class Test(object):
    __slots__ = ["a","b","c"]

    a=1
    b=2
    c=3

b = Test()

c = {'a':1, 'b':2, 'c':3}

d = (1,2,3)
e = [1,2,3]
f = (1,2,3)
g = [1,2,3]
key = 2

if __name__ == '__main__':
    from timeit import timeit

    print("Named tuple with a, b, c:")
    print(timeit("z = a.c", "from __main__ import a"))

    print("Named tuple, using index:")
    print(timeit("z = a[2]", "from __main__ import a"))

    print("Class using __slots__, with a, b, c:")
    print(timeit("z = b.c", "from __main__ import b"))

    print("Dictionary with keys a, b, c:")
    print(timeit("z = c['c']", "from __main__ import c"))

    print("Tuple with three values, using a constant key:")    
    print(timeit("z = d[2]", "from __main__ import d"))

    print("List with three values, using a constant key:")
    print(timeit("z = e[2]", "from __main__ import e"))

    print("Tuple with three values, using a local key:")
    print(timeit("z = d[key]", "from __main__ import d, key"))

    print("List with three values, using a local key:")
    print(timeit("z = e[key]", "from __main__ import e, key"))

Python Results:

Named tuple with a, b, c:
0.124072679784
Named tuple, using index:
0.0447055962367
Class using __slots__, with a, b, c:
0.0409136944224
Dictionary with keys a, b, c:
0.0412045334915
Tuple with three values, using a constant key:
0.0449477955531
List with three values, using a constant key:
0.0331083467148
Tuple with three values, using a local key:
0.0453569025139
List with three values, using a local key:
0.033030056702

PyPy Results:

Named tuple with a, b, c:
0.00444889068604
Named tuple, using index:
0.00265598297119
Class using __slots__, with a, b, c:
0.00208616256714
Dictionary with keys a, b, c:
0.013897895813
Tuple with three values, using a constant key:
0.00275301933289
List with three values, using a constant key:
0.002760887146
Tuple with three values, using a local key:
0.002769947052
List with three values, using a local key:
0.00278806686401