Use dict to Speed Up Your Code

In Python, dictionary access is very fast. You can use that to get some speedup in your code  by replacing if/else with dictionary get.

In [1]: fn1 = lambda x: 1 if x == 't' else 0

In [2]: fn2 = {'t': 1, 'f': 0}.get

In [3]: %timeit fn1('y')  # Check "True" branch
10000000 loops, best of 3: 124 ns per loop

In [4]: %timeit fn2('y')
10000000 loops, best of 3: 79.6 ns per loop

In [5]: %timeit fn1('f')  # Check "False" branch
10000000 loops, best of 3: 125 ns per loop

In [6]: %timeit fn2('f')
10000000 loops, best of 3: 81.3 ns per loop

About 30% speedup - not bad :)