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Wrote a basic pig latin script in python where the input is a string and it outputs the pig latin equivalent. I was just wondering what the runtime of this code would be and if there was a way to make it quicker. Off the time of my head, I would assume that the runtime would be \$O(26)\$ or just constant because all you do is look at the last letter and compare it to the list. 

def pig_latin(string):
    consonants = ['b','c','d','f','g','h','j','k','l','m','n','p','q','r','s','t','v','w','x','y','z']
    if string[-1] in consonants:
        string = string[1:] + string[0] + "ay"
    else:
        string = string + "way"
    return string
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  • \$\begingroup\$ Your code only works on one word at a time, not a whole sentence. I believe you need to split on spaces first. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Dec 1, 2017 at 18:33
  • \$\begingroup\$ Your runtime is going to depend on two things: the number of words of the input, and the method you use to determine if the last character is a consonant or a vowel. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Dec 1, 2017 at 18:35

1 Answer 1

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I don't think speed should be your primary concern in this case. The only thing I could come up with as an improvement is to change consonants:

from string import ascii_lowercase

VOWELS = ("a", "e", "i", "u", "o", "y", "w")
CONSONANTS = tuple(char for char in ascii_lowercase if char not in VOWELS)
# These can be constants because they're always the same (at least for the latin alphabet).

Also, you don't handle the case where string is not lowercase. To account for that:

def pig_latin(string):
    string = string.lower()  
    if string[-1] in CONSONANTS:
        string = string[1:] + string[0] + "ay"
    else:
        string = string + "way"
    return string

As @Ludisposed suggested, you don't actually have to convert the entire string to lowercase, if string[-1].lower() in CONSONANTS would do.

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    \$\begingroup\$ You don't have to lower() the entire string, just lower the last char in it should suffice. As a side effect of that the returned string will always be lowercase, I dont know if that is OP's intention. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Dec 1, 2017 at 16:18
  • \$\begingroup\$ Since your CONSONANTS is a generator expression, it will be gradually exhausted with each call of the pig_latin() function. Better to make it a set. \$\endgroup\$ Commented May 18, 2018 at 14:48
  • \$\begingroup\$ @200_success Thanks, I meant to create a tuple. \$\endgroup\$ Commented May 18, 2018 at 16:57

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