Maybe overkill, but I like creating a new class for this kind of thing. You never know when requirements will get fancier ;-) For example,
from time import time
class DecayingSet:
def __init__(self, timeout): # timeout in seconds
from collections import deque
self.timeout = timeout
self.d = deque()
self.present = set()
def add(self, thing):
# Return True if `thing` not already in set,
# else return False.
result = thing not in self.present
if result:
self.present.add(thing)
self.d.append((time(), thing))
self.clean()
return result
def clean(self):
# forget stuff added >= `timeout` seconds ago
now = time()
d = self.d
while d and now - d[0][0] >= self.timeout:
_, thing = d.popleft()
self.present.remove(thing)
As written, it checks for expirations whenever an attempt is made to add a new thing. Maybe that's not what you want, but it should be a cheap check since the deque
holds items in order of addition, so gets out at once if no items are expiring. Lots of possibilities.
Why a deque
? Because deque.popleft()
is a lot faster than list.pop(0)
when the number of items becomes non-trivial.