Both work differently. The list comprehension version takes advantage of the special bytecode LIST_APPEND which calls PyList_Append directly for us. Hence it avoids an attribute lookup to list.append and a function call at the Python level.
>>> def func_lc():
[x**2 for x in y]
...
>>> dis.dis(func_lc)
2 0 LOAD_CONST 1 (<code object <listcomp> at 0x10d3c6780, file "<ipython-input-42-ead395105775>", line 2>)
3 LOAD_CONST 2 ('func_lc.<locals>.<listcomp>')
6 MAKE_FUNCTION 0
9 LOAD_GLOBAL 0 (y)
12 GET_ITER
13 CALL_FUNCTION 1 (1 positional, 0 keyword pair)
16 POP_TOP
17 LOAD_CONST 0 (None)
20 RETURN_VALUE
>>> lc_object = list(dis.get_instructions(func_lc))[0].argval
>>> lc_object
<code object <listcomp> at 0x10d3c6780, file "<ipython-input-42-ead395105775>", line 2>
>>> dis.dis(lc_object)
2 0 BUILD_LIST 0
3 LOAD_FAST 0 (.0)
>> 6 FOR_ITER 16 (to 25)
9 STORE_FAST 1 (x)
12 LOAD_FAST 1 (x)
15 LOAD_CONST 0 (2)
18 BINARY_POWER
19 LIST_APPEND 2
22 JUMP_ABSOLUTE 6
>> 25 RETURN_VALUE
On the other hand the list() version simply passes the generator object to list’s __init__ method which then calls its extend method internally. As the object is not a list or tuple, CPython then gets its iterator first and then simply adds the items to the list until the iterator is exhausted:
>>> def func_ge():
list(x**2 for x in y)
...
>>> dis.dis(func_ge)
2 0 LOAD_GLOBAL 0 (list)
3 LOAD_CONST 1 (<code object <genexpr> at 0x10cde6ae0, file "<ipython-input-41-f9a53483f10a>", line 2>)
6 LOAD_CONST 2 ('func_ge.<locals>.<genexpr>')
9 MAKE_FUNCTION 0
12 LOAD_GLOBAL 1 (y)
15 GET_ITER
16 CALL_FUNCTION 1 (1 positional, 0 keyword pair)
19 CALL_FUNCTION 1 (1 positional, 0 keyword pair)
22 POP_TOP
23 LOAD_CONST 0 (None)
26 RETURN_VALUE
>>> ge_object = list(dis.get_instructions(func_ge))[1].argval
>>> ge_object
<code object <genexpr> at 0x10cde6ae0, file "<ipython-input-41-f9a53483f10a>", line 2>
>>> dis.dis(ge_object)
2 0 LOAD_FAST 0 (.0)
>> 3 FOR_ITER 15 (to 21)
6 STORE_FAST 1 (x)
9 LOAD_FAST 1 (x)
12 LOAD_CONST 0 (2)
15 BINARY_POWER
16 YIELD_VALUE
17 POP_TOP
18 JUMP_ABSOLUTE 3
>> 21 LOAD_CONST 1 (None)
24 RETURN_VALUE
>>>
Timing comparisons:
>>> %timeit [x**2 for x in range(10**6)]
1 loops, best of 3: 453 ms per loop
>>> %timeit list(x**2 for x in range(10**6))
1 loops, best of 3: 478 ms per loop
>>> %%timeit
out = []
for x in range(10**6):
out.append(x**2)
...
1 loops, best of 3: 510 ms per loop
Normal loops are slightly slow due to slow attribute lookup. Cache it and time again.
>>> %%timeit
out = [];append=out.append
for x in range(10**6):
append(x**2)
...
1 loops, best of 3: 467 ms per loop
Apart from the fact that list comprehension don’t leak the variables anymore one more difference is that something like this is not valid anymore:
>>> [x**2 for x in 1, 2, 3] # Python 2
[1, 4, 9]
>>> [x**2 for x in 1, 2, 3] # Python 3
File "<ipython-input-69-bea9540dd1d6>", line 1
[x**2 for x in 1, 2, 3]
^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
>>> [x**2 for x in (1, 2, 3)] # Add parenthesis
[1, 4, 9]
>>> for x in 1, 2, 3: # Python 3: For normal loops it still works
print(x**2)
...
1
4
9