Python Swap two digits in a number?

Question

What is the fastest way to swap two digits in a number in Python? I am given the numbers as strings, so it'd be nice if I could have something as fast as

string[j] = string[j] ^ string[j+1] 
string[j+1] = string[j] ^ string[j+1]
string[j] = string[j] ^ string[j+1]

Everything I've seen has been much more expensive than it would be in C, and involves making a list and then converting the list back or some variant thereof.

Answer 1

This is faster than you might think, at least faster than Jon Clements' current answer in my timing test:

i, j = (i, j) if i < j else (j, i) # make sure i < j
s = s[:i] + s[j] + s[i+1:j] + s[i] + s[j+1:]

Here's my test bed should you want to compare any other answers you get:

import timeit
import types

N = 10000
R = 3
SUFFIX = '_test'
SUFFIX_LEN = len(SUFFIX)

def setup():
    import random
    global s, i, j
    s = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'
    i = random.randrange(len(s))
    while True:
        j = random.randrange(len(s))
        if i != j: break

def swapchars_martineau(s, i, j):
    i, j = (i, j) if i < j else (j, i) # make sure i < j
    return s[:i] + s[j] + s[i+1:j] + s[i] + s[j+1:]

def swapchars_martineau_test():
    global s, i, j
    swapchars_martineau(s, i, j)

def swapchars_clements(text, fst, snd):
    ba = bytearray(text)
    ba[fst], ba[snd] = ba[snd], ba[fst]
    return str(ba)

def swapchars_clements_test():
    global s, i, j
    swapchars_clements(s, i, j)

# find all the functions named *SUFFIX in the global namespace
funcs = tuple(value for id,value in globals().items()
            if id.endswith(SUFFIX) and type(value) is types.FunctionType)

# run the timing tests and collect results
timings = [(f.func_name[:-SUFFIX_LEN],
            min(timeit.repeat(f, setup=setup, repeat=R, number=N))
           ) for f in funcs]
timings.sort(key=lambda x: x[1])  # sort by speed
fastest = timings[0][1]  # time fastest one took to run
longest = max(len(t[0]) for t in timings) # len of longest func name (w/o suffix)

print 'fastest to slowest *_test() function timings:\n' \
      ' {:,d} chars, {:,d} timeit calls, best of {:d}\n'.format(len(s), N, R)

def times_slower(speed, fastest):
    return speed/fastest - 1.0

for i in timings:
    print "{0:>{width}}{suffix}() : {1:.4f} ({2:.2f} times slower)".format(
                i[0], i[1], times_slower(i[1], fastest), width=longest, suffix=SUFFIX)

Addendum:

For the special case of swapping digit characters in a positive decimal number given as a string, the following also works and is a tiny bit faster than the general version at the top of my answer.

The somewhat involved conversion back to a string at the end with the format() method is to deal with cases where a zero got moved to the front of the string. I present it mainly as a curiosity, since it's fairly incomprehensible unless you grasp what it does mathematically. It also doesn't handle negative numbers.

n = int(s)
len_s = len(s)
ord_0 = ord('0')
di = ord(s[i])-ord_0
dj = ord(s[j])-ord_0
pi = 10**(len_s-(i+1))
pj = 10**(len_s-(j+1))
s = '{:0{width}d}'.format(n + (dj-di)*pi + (di-dj)*pj, width=len_s)