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

This is an O(n) solution in Python using hashing with dictionaries. Notice that I don't use default dictionaries because the code can stop this way if we determine the two strings are not permutations after checking the second letter for instance.

def if_two_words_are_permutations(s1, s2):
    if len(s1) != len(s2):
        return False
    dic = {}
for ch in s1:
    if ch in dic.keys():
        dic[ch] += 1
    else:
        dic[ch] = 1
for ch in s2:
    if not ch in dic.keys():
        return False
    elif dic[ch] == 0:
        return False
    else:
        dic[ch] -= 1
return True