Efficiency of using a Python list as a queue

Question

A coworker recently wrote a program in which he used a Python list as a queue. In other words, he used .append(x) when needing to insert items and .pop(0)

Answer 1

From Beazley's Python Essential Reference, Fourth Edition, p. 194:

Some library modules provide new types that outperform the built-ins at certain tasks. For instance, collections.deque type provides similar functionality to a list but has been highly optimized for the insertion of items at both ends. A list, in contrast, is only efficient when appending items at the end. If you insert items at the front, all of the other elements need to be shifted in order to make room. The time required to do this grows as the list gets larger and larger. Just to give you an idea of the difference, here is a timing measurement of inserting one million items at the front of a list and a deque:

And there follows this code sample:

>>> from timeit import timeit
>>> timeit('s.appendleft(37)', 'import collections; s = collections.deque()', number=1000000)
0.13162776274638258
>>> timeit('s.insert(0,37)', 's = []', number=1000000)
932.07849908298408

Timings are from my machine.

---

2012-07-01 Update

>>> from timeit import timeit
>>> n = 1024 * 1024
>>> while n > 1:
...     print '-' * 30, n
...     timeit('s.appendleft(37)', 'import collections; s = collections.deque()', number=n)
...     timeit('s.insert(0,37)', 's = []', number=n)
...     n >>= 1
... 
------------------------------ 1048576
0.1239769458770752
799.2552740573883
------------------------------ 524288
0.06924104690551758
148.9747350215912
------------------------------ 262144
0.029170989990234375
35.077512979507446
------------------------------ 131072
0.013737916946411133
9.134140014648438
------------------------------ 65536
0.006711006164550781
1.8818109035491943
------------------------------ 32768
0.00327301025390625
0.48307204246520996
------------------------------ 16384
0.0016388893127441406
0.11021995544433594
------------------------------ 8192
0.0008249282836914062
0.028419017791748047
------------------------------ 4096
0.00044918060302734375
0.00740504264831543
------------------------------ 2048
0.00021195411682128906
0.0021741390228271484
------------------------------ 1024
0.00011205673217773438
0.0006101131439208984
------------------------------ 512
6.198883056640625e-05
0.00021386146545410156
------------------------------ 256
2.9087066650390625e-05
8.797645568847656e-05
------------------------------ 128
1.5974044799804688e-05
3.600120544433594e-05
------------------------------ 64
8.821487426757812e-06
1.9073486328125e-05
------------------------------ 32
5.0067901611328125e-06
1.0013580322265625e-05
------------------------------ 16
3.0994415283203125e-06
5.9604644775390625e-06
------------------------------ 8
3.0994415283203125e-06
5.0067901611328125e-06
------------------------------ 4
3.0994415283203125e-06
4.0531158447265625e-06
------------------------------ 2
2.1457672119140625e-06
2.86102294921875e-06