Checking if two strings are permutations of each other in Python

Question

I\'m checking if two strings a and b are permutations of each other, and I\'m wondering what the ideal way to do this is in Python. From the Zen of

Answer 1

I did a pretty thorough comparison in Java with all words in a book I had. The counting method beats the sorting method in every way. The results:

Testing against 9227 words.

Permutation testing by sorting ... done.        18.582 s
Permutation testing by counting ... done.       14.949 s

If anyone wants the algorithm and test data set, comment away.