I'm trying to solve this problem from Timus Online Judge. To solve this problem you need generate a sequence of 1 000 000 lowercase Latin letters and write it to stdin in 1 second.
It is easy to solve this problem with C++ or Java. I have python solution here:
import os
from random import randint
s = ''.join(chr(97 + randint(0, 25)) for i in range(1000000))
os.write(1, bytes(s, 'utf8'))
It takes 1.7s:
$ time python3.3 1219.py > /dev/null
real 0m1.756s
user 0m1.744s
sys 0m0.008s
And I got "Time limit exceeded" in result. So the question is "How to do it faster?"
UPD1:
Using randint(97, 122) reduces time at 16ms. Now it is 1.740s
UPD2: Solution by @Martijn Pieters takes 0.979s, but it doesn't pass test either.
UPD3 Martijn Pieters suggested a very good solutions, but it's still slow:
from sys import stdin
from random import choice
from string import ascii_lowercase
s = ''.join([choice(ascii_lowercase) for _ in range(1000000)])
stdout.write(s)
Takes 0.924s
from sys import stdout
from random import choice
from string import ascii_lowercase
for _ in range(1000000):
stdout.write(choice(ascii_lowercase))
Takes 1.173s
from sys import stdout
from random import choice
from string import ascii_lowercase
bal = [c.encode('ascii') for c in ascii_lowercase]
out = stdout.buffer
for _ in range(1000000):
out.write(choice(bal))
Takes 1.155s
from sys import stdout
from random import choice
from string import ascii_lowercase
bal = [c.encode('ascii') for c in ascii_lowercase]
stdout.buffer.write(b''.join([choice(bal) for _ in range(1000000)]))
Takes 0.901s
UPD4
Some guy just solved problem on Timus. I hope he will share his solution :)
UPD5 Thanks to Ashwini Chaudhary for sharing his Python 2.x solution with us:
from random import choice
from string import ascii_lowercase
lis=list(ascii_lowercase)
print ''.join(choice(lis) for _ in xrange(1000000))
It takes 0.527s on my computer and it passes tests on Timus. But problem with Python3.x still remains.
UPD6 Thanks to Markku K. this code:
import os
from random import random
from string import ascii_lowercase
bal = [c.encode('ascii') for c in ascii_lowercase]
os.write(1, b''.join([bal[int(random() * 26)] for _ in range(1000000)]))
Takes 0.445s, but still didn't pass the test
Here's Python 3 code that generates 1000000 "random" lowercase letters in 0.28 seconds (see also 0.11-seconds solution at the end; @Ashwini Chaudhary's code from the question takes 0.55 seconds on my machine, @Markku K.'s code -- 0.53):
#!/usr/bin/env python3
import os
import sys
def write_random_lowercase(n):
min_lc = ord(b'a')
len_lc = 26
ba = bytearray(os.urandom(n))
for i, b in enumerate(ba):
ba[i] = min_lc + b % len_lc # convert 0..255 to 97..122
sys.stdout.buffer.write(ba)
write_random_lowercase(1000000)
% len_lc skews the distribution (see at the end on how to fix it) though It still satisfies the conditions (ascii, lowercase, frequencies of 1, 2, 3 letter sequences):
$ python3 generate-random.py | python3 check-seq.py
where check-seq.py:
#!/usr/bin/env python3
import sys
from collections import Counter
from string import ascii_lowercase
def main():
limits = [40000, 2000, 100]
s = sys.stdin.buffer.readline() # a single line
assert 1000000 <= len(s) <= 1000002 # check length +/- newline
s.decode('ascii','strict') # check ascii
assert set(s) == set(ascii_lowercase.encode('ascii')) # check lowercase
for n, lim in enumerate(limits, start=1):
freq = Counter(tuple(s[i:i+n]) for i in range(len(s)))
assert max(freq.values()) <= lim, freq
main()
Note: on acm.timus.ru generate-random.py gives "Output limit exceeded".
To improve performance, you could use bytes.translate() method (0.11 seconds):
#!/usr/bin/env python3
import os
import sys
# make translation table from 0..255 to 97..122
tbl = bytes.maketrans(bytearray(range(256)),
bytearray([ord(b'a') + b % 26 for b in range(256)]))
# generate random bytes and translate them to lowercase ascii
sys.stdout.buffer.write(os.urandom(1000000).translate(tbl))
How to fix % len_lc skew
256 (number of bytes) is not evenly divisible by 26 (number of lower Latin letters) therefore the formula min_lc + b % len_lc makes some values appear less often than others e.g.:
#!/usr/bin/env python3
"""Find out skew: x = 97 + y % 26 where y is uniform from [0, 256) range."""
from collections import Counter, defaultdict
def find_skew(random_bytes):
char2freq = Counter(chr(ord(b'a') + b % 26) for b in random_bytes)
freq2char = defaultdict(set)
for char, freq in char2freq.items():
freq2char[freq].add(char)
return {f: ''.join(sorted(c)) for f, c in freq2char.items()}
print(find_skew(range(256)))
# -> {9: 'wxyz', 10: 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuv'}
Here, the input range(256) is uniformly distributed (each byte occurs exactly once) but 'wxyz' letters in the output are less often then the rest 9 vs. 10 occurrences. To fix it, unaligned bytes could be dropped:
print(find_skew(range(256 - (256 % 26))))
# -> {9: 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'}
Here, the input is uniformly distributed bytes in the range [0, 234) the output is uniformly distributed ascii lowercase letters.
bytes.translate() accepts the second argument to specify bytes to delete:
#!/usr/bin/env python3
import os
import sys
nbytes = 256
nletters = 26
naligned = nbytes - (nbytes % nletters)
tbl = bytes.maketrans(bytearray(range(naligned)),
bytearray([ord(b'a') + b % nletters
for b in range(naligned)]))
bytes2delete = bytearray(range(naligned, nbytes))
R = lambda n: os.urandom(n).translate(tbl, bytes2delete)
def write_random_ascii_lowercase_letters(write, n):
"""*write* *n* random ascii lowercase letters."""
while n > 0:
# R(n) expected to drop `(nbytes - nletters) / nbytes` bytes
# to compensate, increase the initial size
n -= write(memoryview(R(n * nbytes // naligned + 1))[:n])
write = sys.stdout.buffer.write
write_random_ascii_lowercase_letters(write, 1000000)
If the random generator (os.urandom here) produces long sequences of the bytes that are outside of the aligned range (>=234) then the while loop may execute many times.
The time performance can be improved by another order of magnitude if random.getrandbits(8*n).to_bytes(n, 'big') is used instead of os.urandom(n). The former uses Mersenne Twister as the core generator that may be faster than os.urandom() that uses sources provided by the operating system. The latter is more secure if you use the random string for secrets.
Use string.ascii_lowercase instead of chr to generate lowercase charaters:
from sys import stdin
from random import choice
from string import ascii_lowercase
s = ''.join([choice(ascii_lowercase) for _ in range(1000000)])
stdout.write(s)
Also writing to stdout directly appears to be faster, encoding yourself in python is not faster than having it all handled in the C code.
I also use a list comprehension; str.join() needs to scan through the input sequence twice, once to determine the length of the output, once to actually copy the input elements to output string. A list comprehension then beats out the slower generator-to-list code.
Just using choice(ascii_lowercase) over your method of generating each character from an integer is over twice as fast:
>>> timeit.timeit('f()', 'from __main__ import yours as f', number=3)
11.299837955011753
>>> timeit.timeit('f()', 'from __main__ import mine as f', number=3)
5.330044150992762
You could try and avoid the ''.join() overhead by writing individual characters directly to stdout:
from sys import stdout
from random import choice
from string import ascii_lowercase
for _ in range(1000000):
stdout.write(choice(ascii_lowercase))
Next to try is to write raw bytes:
from sys import stdout
from random import choice
from string import ascii_lowercase
bal = [c.encode('ascii') for c in ascii_lowercase]
out = stdout.buffer
for _ in range(1000000):
out.write(choice(bal))
but these are no improvements over ''.join() in my tests.
Next we move to encoding the ASCII characters to bytes once, then using bytes.join():
from sys import stdout
from random import choice
from string import ascii_lowercase
bal = [c.encode('ascii') for c in ascii_lowercase]
stdout.buffer.write(b''.join([choice(bal) for _ in range(1000000)]))
bal is a list of lowercase ASCII characters encoded to bytes, from which we random pick 1 million items, join them to into a large byte string then write that in one go to the binary stdout buffer.
The bytes join is just as 'slow' as the string version:
>>> timeit.timeit('f()', 'from __main__ import bytes as f', number=3)
5.41390264898655
but we encode 26 characters, not 1 million so the write stage is faster.
I get a huge speed improvement by changing from randint(0,25) to int(random()*25) in your original solution. On my machine, the time went from about 2 seconds, to about 0.6 seconds. If you take a look at the random.py code, you will see that randint is full of checks that you don't want or need.
update: Oops, off by one. You need int(random()*26). Thanks Ashwini
My solution which just got accepted (python 2.7, Execution time: 0.984):
from random import choice
from string import ascii_lowercase
lis = list(ascii_lowercase)
print ''.join(choice(lis) for _ in xrange(1000000))
Accessing elements of a list is faster is than for strings.
In [13]: from random import choice
In [14]: from string import ascii_lowercase
In [15]: lis = list(ascii_lowercase)
In [16]: %timeit ''.join(choice(lis) for _ in xrange(10**5))
1 loops, best of 3: 128 ms per loop
In [17]: %timeit ''.join(choice(ascii_lowercase) for _ in xrange(10**5))
1 loops, best of 3: 134 ms per loop
And you don't need stdout or stdin here as most online judges us something like this to test your script:
$python script.py <in.txt >out.txt
So you can use print instead of stdout and raw_input() instead of stdin, though for huge inputs stdin.readline is faster than raw_input().
Update 1:
Using @Markku's tip execution time was reduced to .64 in py2.7:
from random import random
from string import ascii_lowercase
lis = list(ascii_lowercase)
print "".join( [lis[int(random() * 26)] for _ in xrange(1000000)] )
Try turning some part of it into C++ or another compiled language. That will almost guaranteed make it faster. Python, unfortunately, isn't too fast, especially when it comes to things like this. Try C++, C, or Pascal.
EDIT: Also see the Python Performance Tips
Generate and write in chunks that are a larger power of 2 in size.
Maybe use a string or array of the 26 lower-case letters and randomly pick then instead of generating chars.
Use random.choices?
On Python 3.6:
import random import string %timeit ''.join(random.choices(string.ascii_lowercase, k=10**6)) 1 loop, best of 3: 235 ms per loop
来源：https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16308989/fastest-method-to-generate-big-random-string-with-lower-latin-letters