打印列表的时间复杂度

Question

Here are 2 different codes performing the same function that is printing a list.

• code-1

list1=[5,4,86,2,4,5,3,4]
for i in list1:
    print(i,end=" ")

• code-2

list1=[5,4,86,2,4,5,3,4]
print(list1)

Can I say that printing a list has a time complexity of O(n)? While calculating the time complexity of any program we don't consider the time complexity of printing statements as it takes order of 1 but as in the code-1 it takes order of n.

I am an introvert in Python. So if possible please also share the backend implementation of print(list) or else if any article or blog on it.

Answer 1

The output is different, but that's not important.

Either method is O(n) .

In the first case each element of the list is visited once hence O(n) .

In the second case the print() function itself iterates over the list visiting each element once, also O(n) .

If you really want to you can read the code in the Python source code repository.